“ Aspects of the majority opinion faced strong criticism from one of the court's conservatives: Justice Amy Coney Barrett. She did not join Roberts' opinion in full, criticizing the court for preventing any evidence of a president's immunized acts from being admitted into a related criminal case.
The Constitution, she noted, specifically bars the president from accepting bribes, but under Monday's ruling it would be difficult to prosecute him for it if evidence of his conduct could not be admitted.
Barrett wrote that "excluding from trial any mention of the official act connected to the bribe would hamstring the prosecution."
Roberts responded in a footnote, saying that prosecutors "may point to the public record" in order to show that a president performed the act in question. They just would not be able to introduce "testimony or private records of the president or his advisers."
Clark Neily, a lawyer at the libertarian Cato Institute, said that the back-and-forth between Barrett and Roberts on that point seemed to suggest that a president could not be prosecuted for taking a bribe for a core presidential function, such as pardoning someone.
"I think this is one of the reasons people find the majority opinion so difficult to swallow, including myself," he said. On the other hand, he noted that the issue of whether presidents should have some form of immunity is a "really close call."
To Michael Smith a professor at St. Mary’s University School of Law who has written a law review article called "Is Originalism Bullshit?," the immunity decision shares some of the same characteristics as the Colorado ballot decision, with the outcome being more important than the reasoning.”
http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/originalism-dead-letter-supreme-court-majority-accused-abandoning-lega-rcna159945
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