Justices let Vance follow Trump money
With Donald Trump, it’s all about him and all about money. His money.
So when the Supreme Court last week rejected the president’s attempt to avoid all legal scrutiny of his financial records, the justices reaffirmed that no one, not even the president, is above the law.
The court said the president – the only one in modern times to refuse to make his tax returns public – will eventually have to provide them to a New York prosecutor who opened a criminal investigation into the role that the president and his family business played in hush-money payments – and campaign finance violations – made in the run-up to the election.
That Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., is the attorney who helped put Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, in prison for three years after Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to breaking federal campaign finance laws, tax evasion and lying to Congress about the timing of discussions around a plan to build a Trump Tower in Russia. In ongoing investigations, Vance has sought a range of federal and state tax documents from the accounting firm, Mazars USA, including Trump’s personal returns and those of his business, the Trump Organization dating back to 2011.