Home > Journals > St. John's Law Review > Vol. 99 > No. 2
Document Type
Article
Abstract
(Excerpt)
In Trump v. United States, the Supreme Court of the United States held that a former President has absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts within his core constitutional powers, presumptive immunity for all other official acts, and no immunity for private conduct undertaken while in office. Although the Court granted certiorari to address an immunity question, it then strayed into an evidentiary one in holding certain official acts evidence to be categorically inadmissible in the prosecution of private conduct. This Article interrogates the evidentiary foundation for this lesser-explored aspect of the Trump opinion and the danger it poses to reduce the prosecution of even the most egregious private and criminal conduct to what the author of the majority opinion might call a “one-legged stool.”