Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/23-939_e2pg.pdf
Page Number: 89

22 

TRUMP v. UNITED STATES 

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

C 
Finally, in an attempt to put some distance between its 
official-acts  immunity  and  Trump’s  requested  immunity,
the majority insists that “Trump asserts a far broader im-
munity than the limited one [the majority has] recognized.” 
Ante, at 32.  If anything, the opposite is true.  The only part
of Trump’s immunity argument that the majority rejects is
the idea that “the Impeachment Judgment Clause requires
that impeachment and Senate conviction precede a Presi-
dent’s criminal prosecution.”  Ibid.  That argument is obvi-
ously  wrong.  See  ante,  at  32–34.    Rejecting  it,  however,
does  not  make  the  majority’s  immunity  narrower  than 
Trump’s.  Inherent  in  Trump’s  Impeachment  Judgment 
Clause argument is the idea that a former President who
was  impeached  in  the  House  and  convicted  in  the  Senate 
for  crimes  involving  his  official  acts  could  then  be  prose-
cuted  in  court  for  those  acts.    See  Brief  for  Petitioner  22 
(“The Founders thus adopted a carefully balanced approach 
that permits the criminal prosecution of a former President 
for  his  official  acts,  but  only  if  that  President  is  first  im-
peached  by  the  House  and  convicted  by  the  Senate”).  By
extinguishing that path to overcoming immunity, however 
nonsensical it might be, the majority arrives at an official-
acts  immunity  even  more  expansive  than  the  one  Trump 
argued for.  On the majority’s view (but not Trump’s), a for-
mer President whose abuse of power was so egregious and 
so offensive even to members of his own party that he was 
impeached  in  the  House  and  convicted  in  the  Senate  still
would  be  entitled  to  “at  least  presumptive”  criminal  im-
munity for those acts. 

V 
Separate from its official-acts immunity, the majority rec-
ognizes absolute immunity for “conduct within [the Presi-
dent’s] exclusive sphere of constitutional authority.”  Ante, 
at  9.  Feel  free  to  skip  over  those  pages  of  the  majority’s