Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead(NEW YORK) — President Donald Trump lost his bid Monday to shield his tax returns from the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, which subpoenaed them as part of an investigation into “hush payments” to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal.
In a 75-page decision Judge Victor Marrero said he could not endorse “such a categorical and limitless assertion of presidential immunity from judicial process as being countenanced by the nation’s constitutional plan.”
Trump had argued he was immune from any criminal proceeding while in office. The judge said the president was entitled to no such “protective shield.”
“The notion of federal supremacy and presidential immunity from judicial process that the president here invokes, unqualified and boundless in its reach as described above, cuts across the grain of these constitutional precedents,” Marrero wrote.
The judge dismissed the president’s lawsuit that was meant to stop the subpoena from being enforced.
Trump’s legal team filed an immediate notice of appeal to the 2nd Circuit.
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