President Trump won a brief reprieve from New York law enforcement on Tuesday, as Manhattan’s Second Circuit Court of Appeals further delayed a subpoena for his tax returns from going into effect.
The move came the same day that a lawyer for Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance told a three-judge appeals panel that the office’s investigation into Trump remained broad and far-reaching.
The ruling stays enforcement of a lower court order that threw out arguments from President Trump seeking to invalidate the subpoena, issued last year by a grand jury empaneled by Manhattan state prosecutors.
The Supreme Court rejected an earlier challenge by Trump in July in which he claimed that he was immune from state criminal process, which delayed the subpoena’s enforcement for the past twelve months.
The high court then ordered the district court judge to hear any further arguments that Trump wished to raise. The President raised them, and was shot down last month.
The Second Circuit scheduled oral arguments in the case for Sept. 25. The appeals court will decide whether arguments from Trump that the current subpoena is “wildly overbroad” stand muster.
William Consovoy, a personal attorney hired by the President in the case, has said that Trump will appeal the case once again to the Supreme Court in the event of a loss.
The effect of all the legal tangling has been to delay the subpoena’s enforcement from its initial issuance in August 2019, likely keeping the records out of reach of investigators before the November elections.
