Supreme Court inflicts scathing setback on Trump on tax returns
Unlike his predecessors in the White House, the billionaire never published his tax returns.
The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a new attempt by Donald Trump to avoid handing over his accounting records to a New York prosecutor, allowing the latter to continue his investigations against the former president which put him at risk of indictment in the long term. .
Asked by lawyers for the ex-New York tycoon, the Supreme Court refused to overturn a federal judge's decision who had ordered the delivery of eight years of tax and banking returns to Manhattan prosecutor Cyrus Vance, who has been asking for them for months.
The Supreme Court had already ordered Donald Trump in July 2020 to forward these documents to the prosecutor, but the magnate's lawyers had re-requested him to contest the scope of the documents requested. "The work continues," Vance simply responded in a statement.
Initially centered on payments made, before the presidential election of 2016, to two alleged mistresses of the billionaire, the investigation of Mr. Vance, investigated behind closed doors before a grand jury, now also examines possible allegations of tax fraud, insurance fraud , or bank fraud.
According to US media reports, investigators recently interviewed employees of Deutsche Bank - long the financial backer of Donald Trump and his holding company, the Trump Organization - and his insurance company, Aon.
They also re-interviewed the president's former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, who is serving a prison sentence. He had told Congress that Trump and his company were artificially inflating or reducing the value of their assets, to alternately obtain bank loans or reduce their taxes.
Possible incarceration
If these suspicions were true and Mr. Trump was charged, they would expose the ex-president to possible imprisonment. Unlike federal offenses, violations of state laws cannot be pardoned by the US president.
New York Democratic Attorney General Letitia James is also investigating the allegations of bank fraud and insurance fraud in civil proceedings.
Donald Trump did not immediately react to the Supreme Court's ruling on Monday. But in the past he has called the investigation "the worst witch hunt in US history."
Unlike his predecessors, the real estate developer and ex-reality TV star, who left New York for good to move to his club in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, never released his tax returns. .
