Trump v. United States
Based on Wikipedia: Trump v. United States
Can a president order the assassination of a political rival and get away with it? That question—posed hypothetically during oral arguments—cut to the heart of one of the most consequential Supreme Court cases in American history. The answer the Court ultimately provided in July 2024 left many legal scholars alarmed and Justice Sonia Sotomayor declaring that "the President is now a king above the law."
Trump v. United States wasn't just another legal skirmish in the endless parade of Trump-related litigation. It was the first time the Supreme Court ever addressed whether a president can be criminally prosecuted for actions taken while in office. The question seems almost too basic for a 248-year-old democracy—shouldn't we have figured this out by now?
We hadn't. And what the Court decided will shape American democracy for generations.
The Path to the Supreme Court
The case grew out of the chaos following the 2020 election. By March 2022, the Department of Justice had opened an investigation into Donald Trump's actions between November 2020 and January 6, 2021—the period when Trump and his allies allegedly attempted to overturn the election results, culminating in the attack on the United States Capitol.
Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Jack Smith as special counsel to oversee the investigation. On August 1, 2023, a grand jury indicted Trump on four federal charges related to election interference. It was unprecedented: a former president facing criminal prosecution for actions taken while in office.
Trump's defense team immediately reached for what they hoped would be an impenetrable shield: presidential immunity. In October 2023, they filed a motion to dismiss, arguing that a president cannot be prosecuted for "official duties." Their argument rested on a 1982 Supreme Court case called Nixon v. Fitzgerald, which held that presidents are immune from civil lawsuits—that is, lawsuits seeking money damages—for official acts.
But there's a crucial distinction between civil and criminal cases. Being sued for money is different from being prosecuted for crimes. No court had ever extended Nixon v. Fitzgerald's civil immunity to criminal prosecution.
District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan rejected Trump's immunity claim in December 2023. Trump appealed.
The SEAL Team Six Question
The oral arguments before the D.C. Court of Appeals in January 2024 produced a moment that crystallized the stakes of the case. Judge Florence Pan posed a hypothetical to Trump's attorney John Sauer: Could a president order SEAL Team Six to assassinate a political rival?
Sauer's answer was striking. He argued that unless the president were first impeached by the House of Representatives and convicted by the Senate, the president could not be criminally prosecuted—even for ordering an assassination.
Judge Pan immediately spotted the logical flaw. If there's any circumstance under which a president can be prosecuted—even after impeachment—then the immunity isn't absolute. And if it isn't absolute, where do you draw the line?
Judge Karen Henderson added what many observers considered the most devastating critique of Trump's position. She pointed out the paradox of arguing that a president's constitutional duty to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed" somehow permits that same president to violate criminal laws. How can faithfully executing the law include breaking it?
The appeals court ruled unanimously against Trump in February 2024. Their reasoning was straightforward: "Former President Trump has become citizen Trump... any executive immunity that may have protected him while he served as President no longer protects him against this prosecution."
The panel was emphatic that absolute presidential immunity would "collapse our system of separated powers by placing the President beyond the reach of all three Branches." They concluded with a line that seemed to state the obvious: "We cannot accept that the office of the Presidency places its former occupants above the law for all time thereafter."
But the Supreme Court would see things differently.
A Rushed Timeline That Wasn't
Special Counsel Jack Smith understood the calendar pressure. The 2024 presidential election was approaching, and if Trump won, he could simply order the case dismissed. Smith took the unusual step of asking the Supreme Court to skip the appeals court entirely and resolve the immunity question immediately.
The Court declined. Instead, it let the appeals process play out, then agreed to hear the case in late February 2024. It scheduled oral arguments for April 25—and maintained a stay of the trial until it ruled.
This timing mattered enormously. Every week the Supreme Court delayed was a week closer to the election. If the trial couldn't conclude before voters cast their ballots, the public would never learn the verdict on whether a presidential candidate had committed crimes to overturn the previous election.
Trump's lawyers filed a 67-page brief arguing their position: a president must be impeached and convicted before any criminal prosecution can proceed. This was an extraordinarily broad claim. Under this theory, a president could commit virtually any crime in office and face prosecution only if Congress first removed them—something that has never happened in American history and requires a two-thirds Senate vote.
Smith's team countered with their own 66-page brief emphasizing accountability. They cited United States v. Nixon, the 1974 case in which a unanimous Supreme Court rejected Richard Nixon's claim of "absolute, unqualified Presidential privilege of immunity from judicial process under all circumstances." That case forced Nixon to turn over the Watergate tapes. It established that even presidents must comply with judicial processes.
What the Court Decided
On July 1, 2024, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Trump's favor—though not as completely as he had hoped.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority. The opinion created a three-tier system of presidential immunity that had never existed before.
First tier: absolute immunity. When a president exercises "core constitutional powers"—those granted exclusively to the president by the Constitution—no criminal prosecution is possible. These core powers include commanding the military, granting pardons, and conducting foreign relations. Congress cannot regulate these powers, and courts cannot second-guess how a president uses them.
Second tier: presumptive immunity. For other "official acts"—conduct within "the outer perimeter of the president's official responsibilities"—presidents enjoy presumptive immunity. This means prosecution is possible, but only if prosecutors can demonstrate that bringing charges wouldn't threaten "the power and function of the executive branch." This is a high bar, and the burden falls on prosecutors to clear it.
Third tier: no immunity. Purely private acts receive no protection. If a president commits a crime that has nothing to do with their official duties, they can be prosecuted like any other citizen.
The Court also added a significant evidentiary restriction: testimony and records about immune official acts cannot be introduced as evidence even when prosecuting non-immune acts. This means prosecutors might know a president committed a crime but be unable to prove it because the relevant evidence relates to protected official conduct.
The Dissent's Warning
Justice Sotomayor wrote a dissent that legal scholars will study for decades. She did not mince words, calling the majority's reasoning "utterly indefensible."
"The relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law."
Sotomayor's dissent attacked the majority's framework at its foundation. The Constitution doesn't mention presidential immunity. The Framers, who had just fought a revolution against a king, certainly didn't intend to create an elected monarch immune from criminal law.
She walked through the practical implications. Under the majority's reasoning, a president could order the Justice Department to prosecute political enemies on fabricated charges. A president could accept bribes in exchange for pardons. A president could order the military to stage a coup. As long as these actions involved "official" presidential powers, the president would enjoy at least presumptive immunity.
The majority dismissed these concerns as hypotheticals unlikely to occur. Sotomayor pointed out that hypotheticals have a way of becoming reality—and that the whole point of constitutional law is to prevent abuses before they happen, not to react after they occur.
Why This Matters Beyond Trump
It's tempting to view this case solely through the lens of Donald Trump's legal troubles. But the ruling applies to all presidents, past and future.
Consider what the decision means for the doctrine of separation of powers—the idea that the legislative, executive, and judicial branches check and balance each other. The whole point of this structure is that no one branch, and no one person, can accumulate too much power.
Criminal law has always been one of the ultimate checks on executive power. Presidents can do many things, but they cannot murder, steal, or obstruct justice. Or so we thought. Now, if those actions are taken through "official" channels, a president may be protected.
The ruling also creates a peculiar asymmetry. A low-level government employee who commits a crime while doing their job can be prosecuted. A Cabinet secretary can be prosecuted. But the president—the person with the most power and therefore the most capacity for abuse—now has the strongest protections.
The Practical Fallout
The Supreme Court didn't rule on whether Trump's specific alleged actions were official or unofficial. Instead, it sent the case back to Judge Chutkan to make that determination. This process would take months.
Some observers noted that certain justices seemed to acknowledge this delay was inevitable. Justice Amy Coney Barrett even suggested that Special Counsel Smith might expedite matters by voluntarily dropping some charges rather than litigating the official-versus-unofficial distinction. But that would require Smith to abandon parts of his case before trial.
The delay accomplished what Trump's legal team had sought all along: pushing any trial past the 2024 election. Trump won that election in November. His legal team then moved to dismiss the case, citing a long-standing Department of Justice policy against prosecuting sitting presidents.
Judge Chutkan ultimately dismissed the case. The question of whether Trump committed crimes by trying to overturn the 2020 election will never be answered by a jury.
Historical Context and Future Implications
American history is full of presidents who pushed the boundaries of their power. Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War. Franklin Roosevelt interned Japanese Americans during World War II. Richard Nixon ordered the Watergate break-in and cover-up. In each case, the possibility of legal accountability—even if rarely pursued—served as at least a theoretical constraint.
The Nixon era is particularly instructive. Nixon resigned in August 1974 because it became clear the House would impeach him and the Senate would convict him. His successor, Gerald Ford, then pardoned Nixon for any federal crimes he might have committed. The pardon was controversial, but it rested on an implicit assumption: Nixon could have been prosecuted. He needed a pardon precisely because he faced potential criminal liability.
Under the Trump v. United States framework, much of what Nixon did might now be considered protected. His conversations with the Justice Department about the investigation? Official acts. His orders to subordinates to cover up the break-in? Arguably within his executive authority. The pardon Ford granted might not have even been necessary.
The decision also raises questions about what happens when a president's private and official conduct are intertwined. If a president uses official powers for private benefit—accepting bribes, for instance, by promising favorable official action in return—is that official or unofficial? The majority's opinion provides little guidance on these mixed-motive situations.
The Constitutional Amendment Question
In the aftermath of the ruling, some Democratic politicians introduced constitutional amendments to overturn it. This is the only definitive way to override a Supreme Court interpretation of the Constitution. But constitutional amendments require two-thirds majorities in both houses of Congress and ratification by three-fourths of state legislatures—an extraordinarily high bar in a polarized political environment.
Other proposals focused on Supreme Court reform: term limits for justices, expansion of the Court, or ethics requirements. These could be accomplished through ordinary legislation, though they would face their own political and potentially legal obstacles.
For now, Trump v. United States stands as binding precedent. Every future president will enjoy its protections. Every future prosecutor will face its obstacles. And every future American will live under a Constitution that, according to six justices, shields presidents from criminal accountability for their official actions.
A Question Left Unanswered
Return to Judge Pan's hypothetical: Can a president order the assassination of a political rival?
Under the majority's framework, the answer depends on how the order is characterized. If the president frames the assassination as an official national security action—labeling the rival a threat to the country, for example—it might fall within the president's core authority over military operations and national defense. The president would enjoy absolute immunity.
The majority would likely respond that such an extreme abuse would be checked by other means: impeachment, the ballot box, the refusal of subordinates to carry out illegal orders. But these checks assume that the political system is functioning normally and that people in power are willing to enforce norms against a lawbreaking president.
History suggests that assumption may be optimistic. When the president is also the leader of a political party, impeachment becomes a partisan exercise. When the president controls the Justice Department, subordinates may follow orders rather than resist them. When the president can pardon co-conspirators, the threat of criminal punishment for those who help may be hollow.
The genius of the American constitutional system was supposed to be that it didn't rely on the virtue of any individual. It created structural checks that would function even if bad actors held power. Trump v. United States weakens one of those structural checks. Whether the remaining ones are sufficient remains to be seen.
The case may be over for Donald Trump. Its consequences for American democracy are just beginning.