*IANAL

There is a good amount of law surrounding the POTUS and court proceedings. However there is no case law on point regarding whether the potus can be criminally indicted as it has never happened before.

Some caselaw that will probably be used to justify either postion on the matter: U.S. v. Nixon; Nixon v. Fitzgerald; Clinton v. Jones; and a few more but I cant get my outline from a year ago to open on my phone.

Those mentioned cases along with the one I’ll need to edit in later, don’t specifically prohibit criminal indictments against a sitting president. Generally those cases allow some privilege and immunity in criminal cases and near absolute in civil proceedings.

For example, Nixon was subpoenaed in the criminal Watergate case and his naked claim of privilege was insufficient to preclude production.

On the other hand, Cheney’s naked claim of privilege was sufficient to defeat a subpoena in a civil matter.

I am admittedly rusty but Clinton v. Jones may be the key to unlocking this puzzle. Clinton was being sued in civil court while in office for actions/events that occured outside of the office (before he was president and the actions were unrelated to the office). The court held that the president could be civilly sued in federal court for actions outside of the office.

I would imagine, unless the case contemplated criminal cases, that Clinton v. Jones would be the cornerstone case for an argument for or against the criminal indictment of a sitting President.

*IANAL