It appears you are saying that the court must waive the criminal component, as long as it’s part of an official act.

That's the part that concerns me. Thank you for spelling it out more clearly than I have been able to.

Let’s say a president accepts a bribe to give someone a pardon. Or something even more sinister. The president says if you arrange to murder person X, I’ll give you a pardon.

The crime isn’t the president giving a pardon. That’s not the illegality. The crime is taking a bribe or conspiracy to commit murder.

That could lead to an interesting result. Very interesting, particularly in the murder case.

So a president agrees to a "murder for pardon" scheme. They have to be careful that this can't be charged under state laws, only federal. Not sure how that works in detail, but I'll assume its possible. The murderer does his job and the president immediately issues a pardon. (Gotta do that quickly while he's still president, so can't wait for a trial and conviction.) Because the pardon power is absolute, the murderer gets off. The president could be charged with conspiracy, though.

Maybe his successor would pardon him if it were politically expedient to do so.

--Peter