WORLD Don’s taxing times

Trump wants protection from ‘politically motivated subpoenas’

US PRESIDENT Donald Trump has asked the Supreme Court to bar a prosecutor from obtaining his tax returns, arguing that as president he should be afforded blanket immunity.

Mr Trump, a former New York businessman, is the first American president since Richard Nixon not to make his tax returns public, claiming they are under audit by the Internal Revenue Service.

But opposition Democrats have turned to the courts to force their release in a case that’s considered a crucial test of the separation of powers.

And if the US High Court – where conservative judges hold the majority – decides to take up the case, their decision will receive endless scrutiny.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr, a Democrat, has demanded Mr

Trump’s tax returns as part of an investigation into payments made by his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, to Stormy Daniels.

Daniels is an adult film actor who claimed to have had a sexual liaison with Mr Trump before he ran for president in 2016.

Last week, a federal appeals court ruled Mr Trump must hand over the documents.

But the President’s lawyers argue that he enjoys immunity both from prosecution and from any acts of investigation.

“For the first time in our nation’s history, a state or local prosecutor has launched a criminal investigation of the President of the United States and subjected him to coercive criminal process,” Mr Trump’s lawyer Jay Sekulow said yesterday. “Politically motivated subpoenas like this one are a perfect illustration of why a sitting president should be categorically immune from state criminal process.”

At a hearing on the case on October 23, one of Mr Trump’s lawyers even argued that the President would have immunity even if he shot someone in the street – a statement immediately challenged by jurists and mocked by Democrats.