Trump Has ‘Weighty Constitutional Issues,’ U.S. Says of Tax Suit

(Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Justice Department is siding with President Donald Trump’s request to delay enforcement of a subpoena for his tax filings and other financial records to give his legal team time to address the “weighty constitutional issues” involved in the case.

The Justice Department on Wednesday told U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero that the government agrees with Trump that the case should be heard in federal court, not New York state court, as Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. said. And the lawyers said Marrero should impose a “short delay” of the deadline for enforcement of the subpoena if the parties can’t agree to one themselves.

Under a deal worked out between Trump’s personal attorneys and Vance’s office, Trump’s accountants would have to turn over documents to state prosecutors by Oct. 7, or two days after a judge rules on the president’s request to block the subpoena, whichever comes first.

“The president’s complaint raises a number of significant constitutional issues that potentially implicate important interests of the United States,” the Justice Department said in the court filing. A delay is “necessary to allow for appropriate briefing of the weighty constitutional issues involved,” it said.

Vance’s spokeman Danny Frost declined to comment on the Justice Department filing.

Trump sued Vance on Sept. 19 to block a subpoena to Mazars USA LLP from a state grand jury investigating hush-money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal. Trump sued Vance and Mazars in his private capacity, not as U.S. president. Mazars took no position in the case and said it would comply with whatever the court orders.

One thing notable about the Justice Department’s filing is what it left out. The brief 10-page legal memo didn’t address the central issue at heart of the legal battle: whether Trump, as president, is insulated from criminal investigation of any sort, as his lawyers have maintained.

Existing Justice Department policy, dating back to 1973 and reaffirmed in 2000, holds that a sitting president cannot be charged with a crime. But the policy does not address whether a sitting president can be investigated, or whether that protection extends to investigation by non-federal law enforcement agencies. And while that policy remains in effect, it hasn’t been ruled on by a court or enacted into law by Congress.

It wasn’t clear from the Justice Department’s memo whether it would take that position at a later date. But it said the president should be allowed to make the argument in federal court.

While the department asked for more time for briefs to be filed it didn’t say whether it intended to do so.

The case is Trump v. Vance, 19-cv-8694, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

To contact the reporters on this story: Bob Van Voris in federal court in Manhattan at rvanvoris@bloomberg.net;Christian Berthelsen in New York at cberthelsen1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net, Joe Schneider

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