In this column, Due Diligence, erstwhile attorney and GQ staff writer Jay Willis untangles the messy intersection of law, politics, and culture.

In the latest bit of legal wrangling over President Donald Trump's tax returns, a federal court ruled on Monday that Trump cannot prevent his accounting firm, Mazars USA, from turning over eight years' worth of his tax returns to Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. In doing so, a three-judge panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Trump's assertions that he enjoys "broad presidential immunity from state criminal process" while he is in office—and hints at the criminal liability he could face the moment he leaves it.

Monday's order relates to Vance's ongoing criminal probes of, among other things, the Trump Organization's involvement in hush money payments made to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, two women with whom Trump allegedly had extramarital affairs, in order to keep their stories out of the headlines during the 2016 presidential election. As part of that investigation, Vance issued a subpoena for financial records to the Trump Organization earlier this year. Trump has fought to keep confidential throughout his presidency, despite repeated campaign promises to make them public. So when the president's lawyers unsurprisingly declined to include the president's tax returns, Vance issued a subpoena to the president's accounting firm instead.

In September, Trump sued Vance to prevent enforcement of the Mazars subpoena, arguing to a federal District Court judge that sitting presidents are immune from any and all criminal investigations, including those conducted by state authorities. This would be a significant expansion of the existing Department of Justice policy against charging presidents with federal crimes, and U.S. District Court Judge Victor Marrero flatly rejected it. Such a "categorical and limitless assertion of presidential immunity from judicial process," he wrote, is an "overreach of executive power" and "repugnant to the nation’s governmental structure and constitutional values."

In this appeal to the Second Circuit, the president's lawyers did not retreat from the extraordinary notion of what they called "temporary absolute presidential immunity." At oral argument, Trump attorney William Consovoy even extended it to his client's infamous campaign-trail hypothetical about how his supporters were so loyal that he could "stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody" without losing any votes. In that situation, Consovoy argued to an audibly-incredulous Judge Denny Chin, he could perhaps be charged with murder, but not until after his White House tenure had concluded.

Like Judge Marrero, Judge Chin and his colleagues on the Second Circuit were having none of this line of reasoning. In a 34-page order, authored by Chief Judge Robert Katzmann, they acknowledge that courts, mindful of a president's unique responsibilities in the constitutional order, should not blindly treat a president like they would anyone else—for example, by ordering their attendance at trials, or compelling them to provide live, in-court testimony. But, the order continues, this subpoena is directed at a third party, not at Trump; in context, the court notes, "compliance does not require the President to do anything at all." This is Trump's second loss on the subject in less than a month, after a three-judge panel for the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit decided in mid-October that the House of Representatives, too, can enforce a subpoena against Mazars as part of its congressional oversight responsibilities.