SSLSocket.getpeercert returns none if cert isn't valid

Bug report

Bug description:

It's possible I'm misunderstanding, but it seems the documentation around SSLSocket.getpeercert is incorrect and/or the function is bugged. This was run on Fedora 40 with python 3.12.5. I'm trying to bypass DNS and pull the SSL cert straight from an IP for a specific set of Hosts.

the docs I'm referencing: https://docs.python.org/3/library/ssl.html#ssl.SSLSocket.getpeercert

Site and HostIP are variables representing a site URL and a Apache server's direct IP address. This is inside a function call.

the code:

	#empty cert info dict
	SiteCertInfo = {}

	#create SSL context and socket
	#this overrides "DNS" so we can pull the SSL cert as it is on the server
	sslContext = ssl.create_default_context()
	sslSock = socket.socket()
	sslConn = sslContext.wrap_socket(sslSock, server_hostname=Site)

	#try the connection
	try:
		sslConn.connect((HostIp, 443))
 
	#ssl cert can't be verified / doesn't match
	except ssl.SSLCertVerificationError as ex:
		#show error reasons
		print(Site + " site SSL did not verify. reason: " + ex.verify_message, file=sys.stderr)

		#continue
		pass
	


	#pull the cert from the connection
	sslCert = sslConn.getpeercert()

The error:

    sslCert = sslConn.getpeercert()
              ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/usr/lib64/python3.12/ssl.py", line 1129, in getpeercert
    return self._sslobj.getpeercert(binary_form)
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'getpeercert'

The issue:
The documentation states "for a client SSL socket, the server will always provide a certificate, regardless of whether validation was required;" I'm reading that as my python "client" connecting to the remote server should always get a cert even if it fails validation.

However, if the certificate is expired I'm catching the error and continuing on via the pass call. The sslConn.getpeercert() call fails as sslConn is None. If I don't catch the error then it just fails as normal.

If I try and by-pass validation by doing:

	sslContext = ssl.SSLContext(protocol = ssl.PROTOCOL_TLS_CLIENT)
	sslContext.check_hostname = False
	sslContext.verify_mode = ssl.CERT_NONE
	sslContext.set_default_verify_paths()

This just fails and pulls a "empty" dict for sslCert. If I set verify_mode back to CERT_REQUIRED I'm back to square one.

So, there doesn't seem to be a way to "catch" the validation error, but still continue to load the cert if the cert is expired or to disable validation via CERT_NONE and still pull the cert data and manually "validate" it.

CPython versions tested on:

3.12

Operating systems tested on:

Linux

Start with the documented behavior of ssl.SSLSocket.getpeercert and the SSLContext verification settings, then reproduce the reported connection flow using an expired certificate and CERT_NONE. Compare the socket state after SSLCertVerificationError with the result of getpeercert(binary_form=True). Done means establishing whether the behavior is an implementation bug or documentation issue and adding the corresponding regression test or documentation clarification.