JUST GIVE UP

NY Judge Throws Out Trump’s Request for a Stay on Subpoena Demanding Tax Records

The denial comes just a day after the judge denied Trump’s second attempt to block the Manhattan DA from obtaining years of his tax returns.

A New York federal judge on Friday denied President Donald Trump’s request to temporarily halt a grand jury subpoena for years of his tax returns. The denial came just a day after Judge Victor Marrero—who originally rejected the president’s efforts to block District Attorney Cyrus Vance from subpoenaing eight years of tax returns—upheld Vance’s subpoena and dismissed Trump’s attempt to once again block it. Last August, Vance’s office issued a subpoena to Mazars, the president’s accounting firm, as part of the investigation into hush-money payments allegedly made to several women before the 2016 election. Shortly after, Trump’s team asked the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals to put the subpoena on hold until the higher court can weigh in on the matter—but the federal appeals court denied that request Friday afternoon.

Marrero wrote on Friday that the president failed to prove he would suffer “irreparable harm” if his stay request was denied. “Because a grand jury is under a legal obligation to keep the confidentiality of its records, the Court finds that no irreparable harm will ensue from the disclosure to it of the President’s records sought here,” Marrero wrote. In his Thursday ruling, Marrero wrote that he could not “mechanically credit” the president’s arguments that Vance’s subpoena was “wildly over-broad.” In a 7-2 decision in July, the Supreme Court sided with Vance in the belief that Trump should not get absolute immunity as a sitting president. But they sent the case back to the lower courts for a final decision on the specific subpoena issue.