Vance has Trump's tax records from Deutsche Bank

The office of the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance, is seeking eight years of the president’s personal and corporate tax records, but has disclosed little about what prompted the prosecutor and his team to request the records beyond payoffs to women to silence them about alleged affairs with Trump in the past.

Lawyers for Vance told a judge in New York on Monday that he was justified in demanding the records from Trump, citing public reports of “extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Trump Organization”.

A report emerged Wednesday that Vance’s office subpoenaed the German lender last year in what the New York Times said was a sign that their criminal investigation into Trump’s business practices is more wide-ranging than previously known.

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Trump’s lawyers last month said the grand jury subpoena for the president’s tax returns was issued in bad faith and amounted to harassment.

In a court filing on Monday, though, attorneys for Vance said Trump’s arguments that the subpoena was too broad stemmed from “the false premise” that the investigation was limited to so-called “hush-money” payments.

They said public reporting demonstrates that at the time the subpoena was issued “there were public allegations of possible criminal activity at plaintiff’s New York county-based Trump Organization dating back over a decade.

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[T]his possible criminal activity occurred within the applicable statutes of limitations, particularly if the transactions involved a continuing pattern of conduct.”

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The German bank, which has been a longstanding source of financing to Trump’s real estate empire, obeyed the subpoena and handed over records supplied by Trump to the bank during the course of applying for loans, the report said, citing unnamed sources with knowledge of the investigation.

  Guardiand