Manhattan D.A. Can Obtain Trump’s Tax Returns, Judges Rule

The Manhattan district attorney can enforce a subpoena seeking President Trump’s personal and corporate tax returns, a federal appeals panel ruled on Wednesday, dealing yet another blow to the president’s yearlong battle to keep his financial records out of the hands of state prosecutors.

The unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel in New York rejected the president’s arguments that the subpoena should be blocked because it was too broad and amounted to political harassment from the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., a Democrat.

“Grand juries must necessarily paint with a broad brush,” the judges wrote.

They concluded that the president did not show that Mr. Vance had been driven by politics. “None of the president’s allegations, taken together or separately, are sufficient to raise a plausible inference that the subpoena was issued out of malice or an intent to harass,” they wrote.

Mr. Trump is expected to try to appeal the decision in the United States Supreme Court. Mr. Vance has said that his office will not enforce the subpoena for 12 days in exchange for the president’s lawyers’ agreeing to move quickly.

Jay Sekulow, a lawyer for the president, did not comment on the ruling but indicated that Mr. Trump would ask the Supreme Court for an order that would delay enforcement of the subpoena until it decides whether to hear the case.

A spokesman for Mr. Vance declined to comment.

The president and Mr. Vance have been locked in a bitterly contested dispute since August 2019, when Mr. Vance’s office first subpoenaed eight years of Mr. Trump’s tax returns and other financial records from his accounting firm, Mazars USA. The subpoena is part of an investigation focused on Mr. Trump and his business practices. Mr. Vance has not revealed the scope of his office’s criminal inquiry, citing grand jury secrecy.