With all of the focus on Donald Trump’s attempts to get (numerous!) foreign countries to dig up dirt on his political rivals, you may have forgotten about all the other shady businesses he’s gotten into in the past few years. Like, for example, promising to release his tax returns and then never doing it, and fighting any and all attempts to access them with a force that suggests they contain the type of damning information he would never, ever want anyone to see. And just in case it wasn’t clear before how completely panicked the president is at the notion of prying eyes getting to see his elusive financial information, he’s now enlisted the federal government to keep them under lock and key.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan—which answers to the Justice Department—will participate in a lawsuit filed by Trump seeking to block a subpoena for eight years of his tax returns. For those of you keeping up at home, the DOJ is headed by William Barr, who is now reportedly doing the president’s personal bidding on multiple fronts. In a letter to the judge, U.S. Attorney for Manhattan Geoffrey Berman and Jeffrey Oestericher, chief of the office’s civil division, said they would file a submission in the case by tomorrow.
Last month, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. sent a subpoena to Trump’s longtime accounting firm, Mazars USA, requesting eight years of his personal and business tax returns as part of an investigation into the $130,000 hush money payment made to Stormy Daniels, which former Trump attorney Michael Cohen paid and for which he was later reimbursed by Trump and the Trump Organization. Three days later, Trump sued Vance and Mazars, claiming that the request was unconstitutional and unveiling the bold argument that it’s illegal to investigate a sitting president for any crimes he may have committed.
