Presidential Immunity

Presidential immunity is the concept that a sitting president of the United States has both civil and criminal immunity for their official acts.[a] Neither civil nor criminal immunity is explicitly granted in the Constitution or any federal statute.[1][2] However, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Trump v. United States (2024) that all presidents have absolute criminal immunity for official acts under core constitutional powers, presumptive immunity for other official acts, and no immunity for unofficial acts. The court made this decision after former President Donald Trump claimed absolute immunity from being investigated for any crimes committed while in office. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_immunity_in_the_United_States

• No court was willing to assert jurisdiction over the president until the D.C. District Court did so over Richard Nixon in Minnesota Chippewa Tribe v. Carlucci (1973).[12] After the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals entered a declaratory judgment against Nixon in National Treasury Employees Union v. Nixon (1974) and contemplated the possibility of a writ of mandamus against him, a wave of suits directly against Nixon began.[10] In 1978, in Butz v. Economou, the U.S. Supreme Court held that in a constitutional cause of action (as allowed in Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents [1971]), Spalding and Barr (which were about common law causes of action) did not control, and federal executive officials were entitled only to qualified immunity, not absolute.[13] The next year in Halperin v. Kissinger, the D.C. Circuit extended that logic to Nixon, who had by then resigned.
• In 1973, amid the Watergate scandal, the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) issued a memorandum concluding that it is unconstitutional to prosecute a sitting president.[24] Its arguments include that the president "is the symbolic head of the Nation. To wound him by a criminal proceeding is to hamstring the operation of the whole governmental apparatus in both foreign and domestic affairs."[25] It says that the statute of limitations should not be tolled while the president is in office, but suggests that Congress could extend the statute of limitations specifically for presidents.[26] After the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Clinton, the OLC issued a second memorandum in 2000, distinguishing civil and criminal presidential immunity and determining that it was still improper to prosecute a president due to the adverse affect it might have on his ability to govern.[27] Neither memorandum has force of law, but both are binding within the Department of Justice. Because they were not promulgated with room for public comment, they do not qualify as administrative law either; rather, they are an internal prosecutorial policy.