The special prosecutor focuses on then-President Trump’s motives—a critical legal error.

By David B. Rivkin, Jr., and Elizabeth Price Foley

October 14, 2024, in the Wall Street Journal

Jack Smith made no concessions in his response to the Supreme Court’s July ruling in Trump v. U.S., which rejected the special counsel’s contention that he had unlimited authority to prosecute Donald Trump for alleged crimes that involved official presidential acts. Chief Justice John Roberts provided a framework for distinguishing official acts from private ones and for determining which official acts could be prosecuted.

In a 165-page brief filed with Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is presiding over the election-fraud case, Mr. Smith acknowledges only that Mr. Trump’s communications with Justice Department officials were official acts and can’t be prosecuted—as the justices expressly said. But Mr. Smith characterizes then-President Trump’s official conversations with the vice president as outside the zone of immunity and his communications with state officials and the public not as official acts of the president but private acts of a candidate. In so doing he gives short shrift to the separation-of-powers justification for immunity.

Trump v. U.S. extended presidential immunity, which the court recognized in Nixon v. Fitzgerald (1982), from civil lawsuits to criminal prosecutions. Like the immunity enjoyed by prosecutors, judges and members of Congress, the president’s immunity for official acts is predicated on separation of powers. Fitzgerald held that immunity is especially important for the president, who “occupies a unique position in the constitutional scheme” as head of a branch of government—an “easily identifiable target” for legal attacks that could thwart the effective functioning of the office.

A president’s immunity from criminal prosecution is absolute when he exercises his core constitutional powers, such as recognizing foreign governments, nominating and firing executive officers, commanding the military, issuing pardons, faithfully executing the laws—and, as in this case, directing an executive-branch department.

Other acts within the “outer perimeter” of the president’s responsibility, the court explained, have “at least” a presumptive immunity. The presumption is rebuttable only if the prosecutor can prove that the acts are “manifestly or palpably beyond” the president’s authority, such that, as Fitzgerald put it, imposing liability would “pose no dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch.”

Mr. Smith’s brief falls short of making that case. His primary argument is that the “throughline” of Mr. Trump’s postelection efforts “was deceit,” because the president made “knowingly false claims of election fraud.”

The prosecutor’s focus on Mr. Trump’s motive is a critical legal error. The Trump decision reiterated Fitzgerald’s holding that in distinguishing between official and private acts, “courts may not inquire into the President’s motives.” Allowing such an inquiry would vitiate the president’s immunity, since virtually every presidential decision is based in part on political considerations, and suits against a president would always allege improper motives.

The only relevant questions, therefore, are whether a president’s acts, objectively viewed, are official or unofficial, and if they are official, whether they can be prosecuted without intruding on the president’s legitimate authority. Mr. Smith asserts that when a president seeks “to influence his Vice President” about electoral certification, it is outside the zone of immunity because the vice president exercises this power as president of the Senate, and the “Executive Branch plays no role.” He deems Mr. Trump’s interactions with state officials private because the president has “no official role” in the Electoral College process or enforcing state election law. And he asserts that Mr. Trump made various public statements in his capacity as a candidate, not as president.

The court has rejected Mr. Smith’s cramped view of presidential authority on several occasions. In his concurrence in Youngstown Sheet & Tube v. Sawyer (1952), Justice Felix Frankfurter observed that executive power extends beyond statutes and express constitutional provisions to include the “gloss” of longstanding presidential practice. In Dames & Moore v. Regan (1981), a majority embraced Frankfurter’s view.

The Trump decision also accepted Frankfurter’s view, observing that “some Presidential conduct—for example, speaking to and on behalf of the American people—certainly can qualify as official even when not obviously connected to a particular constitutional or statutory provision.” The president is “expected to comment on those matters of public concern” and in so doing so, he may pressure others—outside the executive branch—to behave in certain ways. In McDonnell v. U.S. (2016), the court held that an “official act” under the federal bribery statute includes using one’s office “to exert pressure on another official to perform an official act.”

Mr. Smith asserts that Mr. Trump’s legal efforts in his “capacity as a candidate” to challenge certain state elections prove that his conversations with officials and statements to the public were private actions. But that gets it backward. Under Trump, the burden is on the prosecutor to show that his allegations don’t infringe on the president’s official duties, not on the president to show that his exercise of those duties is untainted by private considerations.

Chief Justice Roberts writes in Trump that immunity is a “farsighted” constitutional doctrine designed to prevent constant legal harassment from enfeebling the presidency. Without immunity, the threat of civil and criminal liability would create, as George Washington put it in his Farewell Address, the “alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge” with every new administration.

Democrats profess to be worried that Mr. Trump, if returned to office, will use the justice system to seek retribution against his political opponents. They should stop and consider that presidential immunity also restrains that “spirit of revenge” if Mr. Trump wins in November.

Mr. Rivkin served at the Justice Department and the White House Counsel’s Office during the Reagan and George H.W. Bush Administrations. Ms. Foley is a professor of constitutional law at Florida International University. Both practice appellate and constitutional law in Washington.

Source: https://www.wsj.com/opinion/what-jack-smith-gets-wrong-about-immunity-law-election-presidential-power-f4f57ead