NEW YORK -- President Donald Trump, seeking to block a subpoena for his tax returns, plans to ask a federal judge to order Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. to disclose details about his investigation into the president's business practices, according to a letter filed Monday.
The letter, which Trump's lawyers wrote to the federal judge in Manhattan, was in response to a filing from prosecutors in Vance's office, who argued last week that they had wide legal basis to subpoena eight years of the president's tax records and other financial documents.
The office suggested it was investigating the president and his company for possible bank and insurance fraud, a significantly broader inquiry than prosecutors had acknowledged in the past.
In their letter, Trump's lawyers asked for a hearing to discuss whether Vance's office should be forced to disclose the justifications for the subpoena. The president's lawyers, who have called the subpoena "wildly overbroad" and the investigation politically motivated, said the prosecutors should be required to show that each item requested in the subpoena is relevant to their investigation and within their jurisdiction.
In a separate filing, they wrote that even if Vance's office was conducting a sprawling inquiry into financial crimes, the subpoena was still too broad.
"If anything, it shows that the district attorney is still fishing for a way to justify his harassment of the president," Trump's lawyers wrote.
They noted that the subpoena asked "for every document and communication related to the president and his businesses over about the last decade" and simply copied a congressional subpoena seeking the same information.
A spokesman for the Manhattan district attorney's office declined to comment. The office has previously accused Trump of employing delay tactics in order to run out the clock on the statute of limitations for bringing any possible criminal charges.
The filings were the latest salvo in the nearly yearlong fight over the tax records between Trump and Vance, a Democrat. Vance's office was expected to file a response by Friday.
Until recently, the district attorney's inquiry appeared largely focused on hush-money payments made in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election to two women who said they had affairs with Trump.
But in a court filing last week, Vance's office suggested for the first time that its investigation was focused on possible fraud. The office cited several newspaper articles in describing what it called "public reports of possibly extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Trump Organization," the president's company.
In their response, lawyers for the president said Vance's office had initially subpoenaed the Trump Organization for information related to the payments, leading to a dispute about whether the company was required to hand over tax returns.
Trump's lawyers wrote that Vance, "in a fit of pique," then subpoenaed the president's accounting firm, Mazars USA, for the tax returns. The lawyers argued that the request was issued in bad faith because it was identical to a subpoena from a House committee.
They said Vance requested documents that went beyond his New York jurisdiction, including business records and transactions for entities in India and Ireland.
In their letter to the judge, Victor Marrero of the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, Trump's lawyers wrote that Vance "refuses to disclose to the president the nature of the grand jury investigation and has offered shifting reasons for why he copied a congressional subpoena."
The investigation by Vance's office began two years ago but has proceeded only in fits and starts. A senior official in Vance's office recently told Marrero that the tax returns were "central evidence" in its investigation.
Trump first sued to block the subpoena last year, arguing that a sitting president was immune from state criminal investigations.
The case reached the Supreme Court, which last month ruled against Trump by a vote of 7-2.
"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 wrote for the majority.
But the decision opened the door for Trump to return to the lower court and raise other objections to the subpoena. The president raised his new objections in a filing last month.
"The Mazars subpoena is so sweeping," Trump's lawyers wrote, "that it amounts to an unguided and unlawful fishing expedition into the president's personal financial and business dealings."