Trump appeals tax return case to Supreme Court

WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump’s lawyers argue that presidential immunity should keep a New York grand jury from seizing his tax returns. They asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene on Thursday. If the court agrees, it will likely hear arguments in January.

Who wants Trump’s tax returns? New York County District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. is seeking eight years of the president’s tax returns for a criminal investigation into alleged hush-money payments made during the 2016 presidential campaign to two women who claimed they had extra-marital affairs with Trump. The president’s attorney, Jay Sekulow, called the maneuver an “unprecedented use of legal process” against the president. “We assert that the subpoena violates the U.S. Constitution and is therefore unenforceable,” he said. On Wednesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit refused the president’s petition to keep House Democrats from subpoenaing his tax returns, too.

Dig deeper: From the WORLD archives, read my report about the payments that sparked the New York investigation.