Claims of fraud ‘justify sight of Trump’s taxes’

A PROSECUTOR trying to obtain Donald Trump’s tax returns has told a court he was justified in demanding them due to media reports of “extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Trump Organization”.

Cyrus Vance Jr, the Manhattan district attorney, is seeking eight years of the president’s personal and corporate tax records.

Mr Trump’s lawyers said last month that a subpoena for them amounted to harassment of him.

Mr Vance had so far disclosed little about what prompted him to request the records, other than part of the investigation relates to alleged payoffs to women to keep them quiet about alleged affairs, which Mr Trump has denied having.

But in a court filing yesterday, Mr Vance said that Mr Trump’s arguments that the subpoena was too broad stemmed from “the false premise” that the investigation was limited to those “hush-money” payments.

Lawyers for Mr Vance said public reporting demonstrated that at the time the subpoena was issued, there were “public allegations of possible criminal activity at plaintiff ’s New York Countybased Trump Organization dating back over a decade.”

They said: “These reports describe transactions involving individual and corporate actors based in New York County, but whose conduct at times extended beyond New York’s borders.”

They cited several newspaper

‘There were public allegations of possible criminal activity’

articles, including one in The Washington Post about allegations that Mr Trump sent out financial statements to potential business partners and banks inflating his properties’ worth.

There was no immediate comment from the Trump Organization.

Lawyers for Mr Vance said that Mr Trump was not entitled to know the scope and nature of the investigation, but that information in the public domain provided satisfactory support for the subpoena of his tax records.