New York prosecutors reject Trump's immunity claim in the tax return case

President Donald Trump has no "absolute immunity" from a criminal investigation while he remains in office, New York attorneys said on Monday urging a federal judge to reject Trump's efforts to block the subpoena of his tax returns.

Prosecutors also challenged the federal court's jurisdiction in the matter, claiming that it belonged to a state court.

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Trump on Friday asked a federal court to block a summons to appear before a grand jury in New York for his personal and business tax returns over eight years. They are being sought as part of an investigation into the silence payments that took place during the 2016 presidential campaign in favor of two women who claimed to have relations with Trump.

Trump's lawyers argued that a sitting president could not be subject to criminal proceedings while he was in office and wanted the federal court to declare the summons unconstitutional.

Prosecutors responded Monday in the record that Trump "was seeking to invent and apply a new" tax reporting privilege ", assuming that the disclosure of information in a tax return necessarily disclose information that could interfere with the operation of the President, sufficient to meet the test of irreparable harm. "

They added that Trump's claim "is overturned by the fact that every president since Jimmy Carter voluntarily released his tax returns before or at the time of his taking office, which has never stopped until he was released. to date the ability of a president to serve ".

Documents are requested from Mazars USA, Trump's accounting firm. Prosecutors, headed by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., argued that the "only question" was whether Mazars should be required to provide the reports to a grand jury, adding that there was no "state of affairs threatened or pending" against Trump.

They also wrote that the case did not belong to the federal court.

"To the extent that [Trump] In case of valid dispute of the Mazars summons, it should be brought before the New York court competent for the Grand Jury who issued the summons, "said prosecutors. "New York law provides equal protection against abusive subpoenas, whether challenged under the US Constitution, that state courts must uphold … or that they are challenged as" bad faith or … for some other invalid reason. "

US Judge Victor Marrero, appointed by President Bill Clinton, has scheduled a hearing in this case for Wednesday. This is one of the many reasons why Trump is involved in accessing his tax returns, which are also requested by House of Commons chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.).