Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/23-939_e2pg.pdf
Page Number: 28.0

20 

TRUMP v. UNITED STATES 

Opinion of the Court 

(1988) (Scalia, J., dissenting)).  And the Executive Branch 
has “exclusive authority and absolute discretion” to decide
which crimes to investigate and prosecute, including with 
respect to allegations of election crime.  Nixon, 418 U. S., at 
693;  see  United  States  v.  Texas,  599  U. S.  670,  678–679 
(2023) (“Under Article II, the Executive Branch possesses 
authority to decide ‘how to prioritize and how aggressively 
to pursue legal actions against defendants who violate the
law.’ ” (quoting TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, 594 U. S. 413, 
429 (2021))).  The President may discuss potential investi-
gations  and  prosecutions  with  his  Attorney  General  and 
other Justice Department officials to carry out his constitu-
tional duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully exe-
cuted.”  Art. II, §3.  And the Attorney General, as head of 
the Justice Department, acts as the President’s “chief law 
enforcement officer” who “provides vital assistance to [him]
in the performance of [his] constitutional duty to ‘preserve, 
protect, and defend the Constitution.’ ”  Mitchell v. Forsyth, 
472 U. S. 511, 520 (1985) (quoting Art. II, §1, cl. 8).

Investigative  and  prosecutorial  decisionmaking  is  “the
special  province  of  the  Executive  Branch,”  Heckler  v. 
Chaney,  470  U. S.  821,  832  (1985),  and  the  Constitution
vests the entirety of the executive power in the President, 
Art. II, §1.  For that reason, Trump’s threatened removal of 
the  Acting  Attorney  General  likewise  implicates  “conclu-
sive and preclusive” Presidential authority.  As we have ex-
plained, the President’s power to remove “executive officers 
of the United States whom he has appointed” may not be
regulated  by  Congress  or  reviewed  by  the  courts.  Myers, 
272  U. S.,  at  106,  176;  see  supra,  at  8.  The  President’s 
“management  of  the  Executive  Branch”  requires  him  to 
have “unrestricted power to remove the most important of
his subordinates”—such as the Attorney General—“in their 
most important duties.”  Fitzgerald, 457 U. S., at 750 (in-
ternal quotation marks and alteration omitted).