The Manhattan District Attorney's office obtained former President Donald Trump's tax returns.
A spokesman for District Attorney Cy Vance said Thursday that the subpoena for the former president's records from Mazars USA was enforced this week, with Danny Frost, the prosecutor's office's director of communications, telling the Washington Examiner that the financial records were obtained on Monday.
The move came just hours following a Supreme Court denial of Trump's final push to keep his records concealed.
Filings obtained by the DA contain millions of pages of documents related to Trump's tax returns from January 2011 to August 2019, including financial statements, agreements, and other documents relating to the preparation and review of tax returns, according to CNN.
Vance's pursuit of Trump's records are part of an extensive inquiry into the former president's real-estate properties. In 2019, the New York County District Attorney’s Office served a grand jury subpoena on Mazars USA LLP, Trump’s personal accounting firm, demanding financial and tax records from the president and his businesses.
Trump sued the district attorney and Mazars in federal court to block the enforcement of the subpoena, arguing that it violated the separation of powers in the Constitution. He also called the inquiry a "continuation of the witch hunt."
Despite the DA now having access to Trump's records, the likelihood they ever emerge in the public eye is slim due to grand jury secrecy rules.
Prosecutors could examine the documents for inquiries, including property valuations, tax benefits, and loan paperwork.
In October 2019, a federal judge in New York ruled Trump must hand over his tax return documents over an investigation into hush money payments made to women with whom he is accused of having affairs.
The Supreme Court originally ruled 7-2 in July that the Manhattan prosecutor's office could obtain Trump's taxes and other financial information from Trump's longtime accounting firm.
"Two hundred years ago, a great jurist of our Court established that no citizen, not even the president, is categorically above the common duty to produce evidence when called upon in a criminal proceeding," Chief Justice John Roberts said when delivering the majority opinion. "We reaffirm that principle today and hold that the president is neither absolutely immune from state criminal subpoenas seeking his private papers nor entitled to a heightened standard of need."
Trump continued to attempt to block Vance from obtaining the records, and the former president's lawyers appealed the lower court decision and sent it to the U.S. Court of Appeals Second Circuit, only to have the decision maintained and blocked Trump's attempt to appeal the tax forms subpoena in October 2020. The Supreme Court similarly shot Trump down earlier this week.