Vance, in Motion to Dismiss Trump's Objections to Subpoena, Says Request Is Routine to 'White-Collar Crime Investigations'
The DA's Office argued that lawyers for Trump failed to bring up new arguments in their amended complaint filed late last month.
August 03, 2020 at 01:44 PM
3 minute read
In court filings Monday, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.'s attorneys urged Senior U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero of the Southern District of New York to dismiss President Donald Trump's arguments in the ongoing lawsuit over the DA's grand jury subpoena for Trump's tax records, arguing that Trump had failed to bring up new arguments in an amended complaint filed July 27.
The case returned to Marrero's courtroom in July after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected, in a 7-2 vote, Trump's argument that he was immune from state prosecution.
The ruling opened the door for Trump to "raise subpoena-specific constitutional challenges, in either a state or federal forum," Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. wrote, and during a July 16 conference, Marrero said he would allow Trump's attorneys to file an amended complaint based on new arguments against the subpoena.
In the July 27 complaint, William Consovoy of Consovoy McCarthy argued that the subpoena, which was sent to Trump's accounting firm Mazars USA, was overbroad, issued in bad faith and amounted to harassment of the president.
Carey Dunne, general counsel to the Manhattan DA's Office, argued that the subpoena was "no different from many grand jury subpoenas routinely issued in white-collar crime investigations." Though Dunne noted that the burden to demonstrate the subpoena is overbroad rests with Trump, and the DA's Office is not obligated to disclose the nature and scope of its investigation, he wrote that such information is nevertheless available in the public record.
"Public reporting demonstrates that the Office had a valid basis for requesting each category and timeframe of document listed in the Mazars Subpoena. As this reporting makes clear, at the time the Mazars Subpoena was issued, there were public allegations of possible criminal activity at Plaintiff's New York County-based Trump Organization dating back over a decade," Dunne wrote, citing news stories from The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal as examples.
In response to Consovoy's argument that the subpoena was issued in bad faith, Dunne argued that Marrero has already declined to impute bad faith to the DA. In fall 2019, Marrero reviewed a declaration from assistant district attorney Solomon Shinerock and was satisfied that the DA's Office had sufficient basis to warrant issuance of the subpoena, the judge noted during the July 16 conference.
Dunne has repeatedly argued that Trump's attorneys are merely seeking to delay the grand jury investigation. Such delay effectively grants Trump the "temporary absolute immunity" rejected by each level of the federal courts, Dunne argued.
"In short, Plaintiff's recycled claims rest on unsupported and speculative assertions—not the sort of factual allegations that can overcome the legal presumptions of regularity," Dunne wrote.
Mazars, which is represented by Blank Rome and Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker, has taken no position in the case.
Trump is also represented by Alan Futerfas and Mukasey Frenchman & Sklaroff, and Duke University School of Law professor Walter Dellinger and attorneys from Selendy & Gay are part of Vance's team.
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