Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/23-939_e2pg.pdf
Page Number: 83.0

16 

TRUMP v. UNITED STATES 

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

grand jury provides an additional check on felony prosecu-
tions,  acting  as  a  “buffer  or  referee  between  the  Govern-
ment and the people,” to ensure that the charges are well-
founded.  United States v. Williams, 504 U. S. 36, 47 (1992); 
see also Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U. S. 800, 826, n. 6 (1982) 
(Burger, C. J., dissenting) (“[A] criminal prosecution cannot 
be commenced absent careful consideration by a grand jury 
at the request of a prosecutor; the same check is not present 
with  respect  to  the  commencement  of  civil  suits  in  which
advocates are subject to no realistic accountability”). 

If the prosecution makes it past the grand jury, then the
former  President  still  has  all  the  protections  our  system 
provides  to  criminal  defendants.    If  the  former  President 
has  an  argument  that  a  particular  statute  is  unconstitu-
tional as applied to him, then he can move to dismiss the 
charges on that ground.  Indeed, a former President is likely 
to have legal arguments that would be unavailable to the 
average criminal defendant.  For example, he may be able
to rely on a public-authority exception from particular crim-
inal  laws,3  or  an  advice-of-the-Attorney-General  defense,
see Tr. of Oral Arg. 107–108.4 

—————— 

3 See Nardone v. United States, 302 U. S. 379, 384 (1937) (explaining 
that public officers may be “impliedly excluded from [statutory] language 
embracing  all  persons”  if  reading  the  statute  to  include  such  officers 
“would work obvious absurdity as, for example, the application of a speed
law to a policeman pursuing a criminal or the driver of a fire engine re-
sponding to an alarm”); see also Memorandum from D. Barron, Acting
Assistant Atty. Gen., Office of Legal Counsel, to E. Holder, Atty. Gen., 
Re: Applicability of Federal Criminal Laws and the Constitution to Con-
templated Lethal Operations Against Shaykh Anwar al-Aulaqi 12 (July
16, 2010) (interpreting criminal statute prohibiting unlawful killings “to
incorporate the public authority justification, which can render lethal ac-
tion carried out by a government official lawful in some circumstances”). 
4 Trump  did  not  raise  those  defenses  in  this  case,  and  the  immunity
that the majority has created likely will obviate the need to raise them
in future cases.  Yet those defenses would have protected former Presi-
dents  from  unwarranted  criminal  prosecutions  much  more  precisely 
than the blanket immunity the majority creates today.