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Page Number: 66

6 

TRUMP v. UNITED STATES 

BARRETT, J., concurring in part 

score,  I  agree  with  the  dissent.
  See  post,  at  25–27 
(SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting).  The Constitution does not re-
quire blinding juries to the circumstances surrounding con-
duct  for  which  Presidents  can  be  held  liable.   Consider  a 
bribery prosecution—a charge not at issue here but one that 
provides a useful example.  The federal bribery statute for-
bids any public official to seek or accept a thing of value “for 
or because of any official act.”  18 U. S. C. §201(c).  The Con-
stitution, of course, does not authorize a President to seek 
or accept bribes, so the Government may prosecute him if 
he does so.  See Art. II, §4 (listing “Bribery” as an impeach-
able  offense);  see  also  Memorandum  from  L.  Silberman, 
Deputy  Atty.  Gen.,  to  R.  Burress,  Office  of  the  President, 
Re: Conflict of Interest Problems Arising Out of the Presi-
dent’s Nomination of Nelson A. Rockefeller To Be Vice Pres-
ident Under the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the Constitu-
tion 5 (Aug. 28, 1974) (suggesting that the federal bribery
statute applies to the President).  Yet excluding from trial
any mention of the official act connected to the bribe would
hamstring the prosecution.  To make sense of charges alleg-
ing a quid pro quo, the jury must be allowed to hear about 
both the quid and the quo, even if the quo, standing alone,
could not be a basis for the President’s criminal liability. 

I  appreciate  the  Court’s  concern  that  allowing  into  evi-
dence  official  acts  for  which  the  President  cannot  be  held 
criminally liable may prejudice the jury.  Ante, at 31.  But 
the rules of evidence are equipped to handle that concern 
on a case-by-case basis.  Most importantly, a trial court can
exclude evidence of the President’s protected conduct “if its 
probative value is substantially outweighed by a danger of 
. . .  unfair prejudice”  or  “confusing  the  issues.”    Fed.  Rule 
Evid. 403; see also Rule 105 (requiring the court to “restrict
the  evidence  to  its  proper  scope  and  instruct  the  jury  ac-
cordingly”).  The balance is more likely to favor admitting
evidence of an official act in a bribery prosecution, for in-
stance, than one in which the protected conduct has little