United States: Supreme Court inflicts scathing setback on Trump on tax returns
The judges refused to intervene to overturn a decision of a federal judge who ordered the handing over of the accounting records of the former real estate mogul to a New York attorney.
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 transmit these documents to the prosecutor, but the lawyers for the tycoon had requested it again to contest the scope of the documents requested. "The work continues", simply reacted Cyrus Vance in a statement.
Initially focused on payments made, before the 2016 presidential election, to two alleged mistresses of the billionaire, the investigation by Cyrus Vance, investigated behind closed doors before a grand jury, now also examines possible allegations of tax fraud, insurance fraud, or bank fraud.
Suspicions of tax evasion
This investigation is only "the continuation of the biggest witch hunt in the history of our country", reacted the ex-president Monday in a statement, accusing the New York democratic prosecutors of using "the right like a weapon ”. "The Supreme Court should never have let go (this), but they did," he lamented. “I will continue to fight, as I have been doing for five years (even before being elected) despite all the electoral crimes perpetrated against me. And we will win ”.
New York State Democratic Attorney Letitia James is also investigating the allegations of bank fraud and insurance fraud in civil proceedings.
According to US media, 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.
In September 2020, The New York Times, after obtaining nearly two decades of tax documents, published a major investigation indicating that the billionaire's business suffered big losses and pushed him into big debt. According to the newspaper, Donald Trump thus avoided paying federal taxes for 11 of the 18 years of archives obtained, and paid only $ 750 in 2016 and 2017.
If these suspicions were true and Donald Trump was indicted, they would expose the former president to possible imprisonment. Unlike federal offenses, violations of state laws cannot be pardoned by the President of the United States. New York State Democratic Attorney 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 decision 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. .
