WASHINGTON A presidential order to the military to conduct a coup to keep him in office might well be an official act, Donald Trump s lawyer told the Supreme Court Thursday on the question of whether Trumps attempted coup is immune from prosecution.

The extraordinary exchange was among several in lengthy oral arguments before the justices, who will now decide whether the former president will stand trial on federal charges based on his actions leading up to the violent assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Trump has been claiming that all his actions as president were official acts and therefore immune from prosecution entirely. While justices seemed skeptical of that assertion, most expressed concern that former presidents could be prosecuted in bad faith and for political reasons in the years to come.

Reliance on the good faith of the prosecutor may not be enough, Chief Justice John Roberts told Department of Justice lawyer Michael Dreeben.

I take that concern, added Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. I think its a real thing.

How justices decide to protect future presidents from prosecutions based on their legitimate official actions could decide whether Trump faces a trial at all before the November election on the Jan. 6 indictment. If the court orders trial judge Tanya Chutkan to hold an evidentiary hearing to weed out the official components of Trumps actions versus the ones for his private or political gain, that hearing and potential appeals of her ruling could consume many more months.

And if Trump wins back the White House, he could order prosecutors to drop all unresolved federal charges against him.

While Dreeben did not refer to the coming election at all, he repeated his boss special counsel Jack Smiths request that the case be sent back to Chutkan with instructions that concerns about not punishing official acts be dealt with in jury instructions, rather than a separate hearing.

We would like to present that as an integrated picture to the jury so that it sees the sequence and the gravity of the conduct and why each step occurred, Dreeben said.

Trumps lawyer, John Sauer, meanwhile came in for even more pointed questioning from most of the justices, but none more on point than Elena Kagans question about 40 minutes in.

How about if the president orders the military to stage a coup? Kagan asked.

That might well be an official act, Sauer answered.

Sauer also claimed that a presidential assassination of a political rival as well as the sale of nuclear secrets to a foreign power could also be defended as official acts immune from prosecution.

Trump was not at the Supreme Court during the oral arguments Thursday but rather was in a different courtroom, in lower Manhattan, in the early phase of an unrelated criminal trial.

He has made it clear, though, that he is keenly aware of the import of the high courts coming decision. On Monday, he posted an all-capital-letters screed demanding that all actions taken by a sitting president be given complete & total immunity, even those that cross the line. He ended with: God bless the Supreme Court.

Thursday morning, just minutes before he was due in the New York City courtroom, he posted three more times about the immunity case: WITHOUT PRESIDENTIAL IMMUNITY, IT WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE FOR A PRESIDENT TO PROPERLY FUNCTION, PUTTING THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IN GREAT AND EVERLASTING DANGER!

Trump has previously stated that he hoped the three justices he nominated Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett would be loyal to him and has subsequently complained that they and the others selected by Republican presidents have treated him unfairly in an attempt to appear nonpartisan.

On Thursday, Barrett was among those grilling Sauer about whether Trumps various actions to overturn his election loss were official and therefore immune.

I want to know if you agree or disagree about the characterization of these acts as private: petitioner turned to a private attorney who was willing to spread knowingly false claims of election fraud to spearhead his challenges to the election results. Private? she asked Sauer.

Sauer conceded that that activity was not private, although he then claimed that Trump calling Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel to tell her to come up with fake elector slates was indeed an official act.

Trumps lawyers have tried the same immunity arguments twice, before Chutkan and a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. In both courts, the judges sided with prosecutors who argued that a former president should have no more immunity from prosecution than anyone else and that, specifically in this case, Trumps actions to overturn an election were an attack on the foundations of the republic.