Manhattan District Attorney Subpoenas Trump’s Accounting Firm for 8 Years of Tax Returns

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Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.’s office has subpoenaed tax returns of President Donald Trump and the Trump Organization through their accounting firm as part of a larger investigation into the president’s financial dealings.

The accounting firm, Mazars USA, received subpoenas late last month from prosecutors in the Manhattan district attorney’s office, in an attempt to acquire eight years of the president’s personal and business tax filings as part of a more comprehensive effort to dig up any financial activity that could be in conflict with the presidential office, The New York Times reported.

The district attorney’s office is investigating payments made to pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels, who has claimed to have received the payments in exchange for her silence during the 2016 election after allegedly having an affair with Trump.

Former Trump personal lawyer Michael Cohen testified earlier this year that he delivered the payment to Daniels with the knowledge of Trump and said he had been reimbursed by the president and his organization.

Trump has denied the affair and any other wrongdoing.

The Epoch Times reached out to Mazars about the subpoenas.

“Mazars USA will respect the legal process and fully comply with its legal obligations,“ the company responded in a statement. ”We believe strongly in the ethical and professional rules and regulations that govern our industry, our work and our client interactions. As a matter of firm policy and professional rules we do not comment on the work we conduct for our clients.”

Trump Organization attorney Marc Mukasey told Fox News that they “are reviewing and will respond as appropriate,” while Trump told reporters outside the White House, “I don’t know anything about it.”

This subpoenas are the latest effort from Democrats at multiple levels of government to obtain and examine Trump’s state and federal tax returns dating back to 2011.

On July 2, the House Ways and Means Committee filed the lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Treasury, the secretary of the department, Steven Mnuchin, the Internal Revenue Service, and its commissioner, Charles Rettig, in the U.S. District Court in Washington.

The committee said that it filed the suit “to seek relief” from Mnuchin’s and Rettig’s “refusal to produce tax return information concerning President Donald J. Trump in response to the committee’s valid oversight requests.”

Trump has many times referred to the efforts as “presidential harassment.”

Taxpayers are entitled to keep their tax returns private. The committee, chaired by Richard Neal (D-Mass.), is empowered to request tax returns, but the law requires the committee to cite a valid legislative purpose.

In response, Trump filed a suit in federal court in Washington against the House Ways and Means Committee at the end of July.

“We have filed a lawsuit today in our ongoing efforts to end presidential harassment,” said the president’s attorney, Jay Sekulow, in a statement.

“The targeting of the President by the House Ways and Means Committee, the New York Attorney General, and a New York tax official violates Article 1 of the US Constitution,” Sekulow said. “The harassment tactics lack a legitimate legislative purpose. The actions taken by the House and New York officials are nothing more than political retribution.”