US President Donald Trump on Friday urged a federal appeals court to block what he called a bad-faith effort by Manhattan's top prosecutor to enforce a "dragnet" subpoena for his tax returns to advance a criminal probe into his businesses.

In a filing with the Second US Circuit Court of Appeals in New York, Trump's lawyers said a lower court judge erred in giving Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance a green light to obtain eight years of business and personal tax returns from the president's longtime accounting firm Mazars USA.

Trump has spent more than a year resisting the subpoena and is appealing an August 20 decision by US District Judge Victor Marrero in Manhattan to allow its enforcement.

He said Marrero should be required to reexamine his claims without prejudging them as "back-door attempts" to claim absolute immunity from criminal probes while in the White House, an argument the US Supreme Court rejected in July.

A spokesman for Vance did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Oral arguments are scheduled for September 25.

The appeals process likely means Trump's tax returns will not become public before November 3, when the Republican president is seeking reelection.

According to Friday's filing, Vance, a Democrat, largely copied an earlier subpoena from Congressional Democrats, who themselves were "restless" to obtain his returns.

It said the subpoena "makes dragnet requests for reams of the President's papers, requests documents as far back as 2011, and seeks records from entities all over the world," giving it an "unlimited breadth" that Marrero failed to take into account.

"Subpoenas issued to the President that are 'arbitrary fishing expeditions' or that are issued 'out of malice or an intent to harass' are invalid," the filing said.

In refusing to immunize Trump from Vance's probe, the Supreme Court nevertheless said he could raise other objections to the subpoena, including as to its scope.

Source: Reuters