Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/23-939_e2pg.pdf
Page Number: 91

24 

TRUMP v. UNITED STATES 

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

threatened  to  remove  an  Acting  Attorney  General  who 
would  not  carry  out  his  scheme.  See,  e.g.,  App.  216–217,
Indictment ¶¶74, 77.  Yet it is equally clear that the Gov-
ernment does not seek to “impose criminal liability on the
[P]resident  for  exercising  or  talking  about  exercising  the 
appointment and removal power.”  Tr. of Oral Arg. 127.  If 
that were the majority’s concern, it could simply have said 
that  the  Government  cannot  charge  a  President’s  threat-
ened use of the removal power as an overt act in the con-
spiracy.  It says much more. 

The core immunity that the majority creates will insulate 
a  considerably  larger  sphere  of  conduct  than  the  narrow 
core  of  “conclusive  and  preclusive”  powers  that  the  Court
previously has recognized.  The first indication comes when 
the majority includes the President’s broad duty to “ ‘take 
Care that the Laws be faithfully executed’ ” among the core 
functions  for  which  a  former  President  supposedly  enjoys 
absolute immunity.  Ante, at 20  (quoting Art. II, §3).  That 
expansive  view  of  core  power  will  effectively  insulate  all
sorts of noncore conduct from criminal prosecution.  Were 
there  any  question,  consider  how  the  majority  applies  its
newly minted core immunity to the allegations in this case.
It  concludes  that  “Trump  is  . . .  absolutely  immune  from
prosecution for” any “conduct involving his discussions with
Justice Department officials.”  Ante, at 21.  That conception
of  core  immunity  expands  the  “conclusive  and  preclusive”
category  beyond  recognition,  foreclosing  the  possibility  of 
prosecution for broad swaths of conduct.  Under that view 
of core powers, even fabricating evidence and insisting the 
Department use it in a criminal case could be covered.  The 
majority’s  conception  of  “core”  immunity  sweeps  far  more
broadly than its logic, borrowed from Youngstown, should 
allow. 

The  majority  tries  to  assuage  any  concerns  about  its 
made-up core immunity by suggesting that the Government