#Trump’s lawyers and Manhattan DA Cy Vance continue tax return showdown

President Trump’s lawyers returned to Manhattan federal court on Thursday to continue their fight to block the commander-in-chief’s long-sought tax returns from being made public — with a bullish Manhattan DA’s Office declaring “bring it on.”

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. was awarded a minor win last week when the Supreme Court ruled in his favor and declared the president was not immune from state criminal investigations — paving the way for a New York grand jury to subpoena Trump’s financial records.

The final decision on a subpoena was sent back to Manhattan federal court, where the DA’s general counsel Carey Dunne on Thursday told Judge Victor Marrero: “Our position is bring it on.”

On the teleconference call, Trump’s lawyers argued the subpoena from Vance’s office requesting the president’s accounting firm Mazars USA hand over eight years of tax returns was vague and a politically motivated attempt to harass him.

Trump attorney William Consovoy called the subpoena a “wildly over-broad” carbon copy of a similar subpoena from congressional investigators that was also tossed out by the Supreme Court last week.

“This is not a properly tailored subpoena. This subpoena is copied verbatim from a congressional subpoena,” Consovoy told Marrero.

“It’s quite unclear how a congressional subpoena focused on issues ranging from international to the management of a hotel in Washington, DC could be related to a subpoena from the New York District Attorney,” he continued.

But Vance’s office was confident in its case, mainly because it was already heard before Marrero last year, with the judge tossing out the president’s argument that he should be immune from investigation, calling it “repugnant.”

Democratic-leaning New York prosecutors are seeking the Republican president’s tax returns as part of an investigation into whether he paid hush money before the 2016 election to several women with whom he allegedly had affairs.

“I can’t help but observe that we’re in the same place nearly a year ago and that is what the president’s lawyers are seeking here: delay. I think that’s the entire strategy here,” Dunne said.

“These exotic constitutional immunity claims have now been rejected by the Supreme Court,” he added, warning that “justice delayed becomes justice denied.”

Dunne also said the idea that the president was being burdened by the subpoena request was nonsense because the onus is on Mazars USA to produce the records.

The Supreme Court last week ruled that the president was “neither absolutely immune from state criminal subpoenas seeking his private papers nor entitled to a heightened standard of need.”

The historic ruling will allow Vance to have a grand jury subpoena eight years of the president’s tax returns — but the matter will ultimately be decided by Marrero.

“The Supreme Court noted that prosecutors cannot go on ‘arbitrary fish expeditions’ and the court must assess whether the Mazar subpoena is suitably tailored over overly broad,” Marrero said Thursday.

“The second set of issues deals with questions of bad faith and harassment,” he continued.

“The court may also need to consider whether the Mazar subpoena is motivated by a desire to harass or is conducted in bad faith as the Supreme Court noted,” he said.

Trump lawyers tried to sue Vance’s office in 2019 before the move was thrown out by two courts, leading to an appeal to the Supreme Court, the highest legal authority in the United States.