thousands? try millions
The materials that Trump fought to keep secret go far beyond his tax returns. Mazars USA, Trump's longtime accounting firm, was expected to turn over “any and all statements of financial condition, annual statements, periodic financial reports, and independent auditors’ reports,” according to court documents.
Several million pages of documents were handed over to Vance’s office when the subpoena was enforced on Monday, a person familiar with the matter told NBC News.
The records are likely to provide prosecutors with a trove of valuable material, said Andrew Weissmann, a former federal prosecutor.
“The value of the Mazars documents is not in the disclosure of tax returns: that is available to law enforcement from the tax authorities,” said Weissmann, an NBC News legal analyst who previously led the prosecution of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort.
“Accounting records enable a prosecutor to see how the reported tax numbers were calculated. The underlying data is key to proving criminal intent, as it was in the Manafort investigation.”