Trump has partial immunity from prosecution, Supreme Court rules

In her dissent, Justice Sotomayor argued that the ruling would protect a president if he or she ordered US special forces to assassinate a political rival, organised a military coup to hold on to power, or took bribes in exchange for conferring a pardon.

Justice Jackson wrote in a separate dissent that the conservative majority’s ruling “breaks new and dangerous ground” and would “let down the guardrails of the law”.

But Justice Roberts wrote that the “tone of chilling doom” from the dissenters was “wholly disproportionate”.

His opinion said that immunity extends to the “outer perimeter” of the president’s official responsibilities, setting a higher bar for prosecution.

This ruling is “among the worst-case scenarios” for the special counsel, says Aziz Huq, a constitutional law expert at the University of Chicago.

“I think it will be important to see if [Jack] Smith can narrow the indictment by eliminating those facts that the Court has ranked as ‘official’,” he told the BBC.

“This is a major victory for Donald Trump,” legal expert Mitchell Epner told the BBC.

He said the trial judge will now have to decide which charges can move forward, and Trump will be able again to appeal against her ruling all the way to the Supreme Court.

Additional reporting by Kayla Epstein