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Page Number: 56.0

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TRUMP v. VANCE 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

the  People  to  a  functioning  government”  would  be  sacri-
ficed.  Amar  &  Kalt,  The  Presidential  Privilege  Against
Prosecution,  2  Nexus  11,  14  (1997).    “Does  anyone  really 
think,  in  a  country  where  common  crimes  are  usually 
brought before state grand juries by state prosecutors, that 
it is feasible to subject the president—and thus the coun-
try—to  every  district  attorney  with  a  reckless  mania  for 
self-promotion?”  C.  Black  &  P.  Bobbitt,  Impeachment:  A
Handbook 112 (2018).  See also R. Moss, Asst. Atty. Gen., A 
Sitting President’s Amenability to Indictment and Criminal
Prosecution, 24 Op. Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) 222, 260 
(2000)  (Moss  Memo);  Memorandum  from  R.  Dixon,  Asst. 
Atty.  Gen.,  OLC,  Re:  Amenability  of  the  President,  Vice 
President,  and  Other  Civil  Officers  to  Federal  Criminal 
Prosecution While in Office (Sept. 24, 1973). 

B 

While the prosecution of a sitting President provides the 
most dramatic example of a clash between the indispensa-
ble work of the Presidency and a State’s exercise of its crim-
inal  law  enforcement  powers,  other  examples  are  easy  to 
imagine.  Suppose state officers obtained and sought to ex-
ecute  a  search  warrant  for  a  sitting  President’s  private
quarters in the White House.  Suppose a state court author-
ized surveillance of a telephone that a sitting President was
known to use.  Or suppose that a sitting President was sub-
poenaed to testify before a state grand jury and, as is gen-
erally the rule, no Presidential aides, even those carrying 
the so-called “nuclear football,”8 were permitted to enter the 
grand jury room.  What these examples illustrate is a prin-
ciple that this Court has recognized: legal proceedings in-
volving  a  sitting  President  must  take  the  responsibilities 
and  demands  of  the  office  into  account.  See  Clinton  v. 
Jones, 520 U. S. 681, 707 (1997). 
—————— 

8 Atomic  Heritage  Foundation,  Nuclear  Briefcases  (June  12,  2018), 

www.atomicheritage.org/history/nuclear-briefcases.