On Feb. 22, the Supreme Court rejected former President Donald J. Trump’s attempt to shield his financial records, allowing prosecutors in Manhattan to now access these documents.
Trump fought against the prosecutors for 18 months.
“From the start, Mr. Trump’s battle to keep his returns under wraps had tested the scope and limits of presidential power,” The Times reported. “Last summer, the justices rejected Mr. Trump’s argument that state prosecutors cannot investigate a sitting president, ruling that no citizen was above ‘the common duty to produce evidence.’ This time, the court denied Mr. Trump’s emergency request to block a subpoena for his records, effectively ending the case.”
Manhattan district attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. now has the access to these documents.
“He will now have access to eight years’ worth of Mr. Trump’s personal and corporate tax returns, as well as other financial records that Mr. Vance’s investigators view as vital to their inquiry into whether the former president and his company manipulated property values to obtain bank loans and tax benefits,” The New York Times reported.
Now the several million pages of documents will be studied by multiple experts, hired by Vance.
“Vance has enlisted outside experts, including a forensic consulting firm, to help pore over the vast collection of records in search of any improprieties,” NBC News reported.
The records should be valuable for prosecutors, according to Andrew Weissman, a former federal prosecutor and NBC News legal analyst.
“Accounting records enable a prosecutor to see how the reported tax numbers were calculated,” Weissman said. “The underlying data is key to proving criminal intent, as it was in the Manafort investigation.”
Though the district attorney has access to these documents, they will not be made public.
“The documents are not expected to be made public because they are protected by grand jury secrecy rules,” The Associated Press reported.
