US Supreme Court to Parse Official Acts in Trump Immunity Fight

Bloomberg Law [paywall but most of the article is available free]: “The US Supreme Court is poised to reckon with what constitutes an official presidential act in weighing former President Donald Trump’s claim that he’s immune from being criminally prosecuted for trying to overturn the 2020 election. Trump argues the charges are all based on actions he took in his official capacity as president. Prosecutors say nothing he did in trying to remain in power despite his loss was conduct of the office. The justices could try to draw a line between these starkly different views and end up with a ”mixed decision where the former president is immune for allegations stemming from certain types of acts but not others,” said Smita Ghosh, appellate counsel at the Constitutional Accountability Center, a public interest law firm and think tank. With little guidance for the court to go on, legal scholars warn it’s not easy to make a distinction between acts that are immune from criminal liability and those that aren’t. An “official act” of the presidency isn’t a term that’s rooted in the Constitution or a federal statute. It was created largely by the Supreme Court in Nixon v. Fitzgerald, said Matthew Seligman. He’s a fellow at Stanford Law School’s Constitutional Law Center and co-counsel on a brief supporting the government in Trump’s case..”