Article written on July 1, 2024 - I can't believe the legal stupidity being pushed by Democrats like AOC and liberal lawyers, including Justice Sotomayor. The ruling expressly limits absolute presidential immunity against criminal prosecution to "official acts" that the President takes while in office and while exercising his core constitutional powers. For the remaining official actions which are part of his job (like making speeches as the President, etc.), the President has rebuttable presumptive immunity against criminal prosecution.
What that means is that to prosecute, the state would have to prove that the alleged criminal action taken could not have conceivably been done as a normal part of his job as President. It held that the President must be immune from prosecution for an official act unless the Government can show that applying a criminal prohibition to that act would pose no "dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch." Fitzgerald, 457 U. S., at 754.
As an added super intelligent bonus, in dividing official from unofficial conduct, SCOTUS ruled that courts may not inquire into the President's motives. No more mind reading.
So long as a President could defend his actions as an appropriate official exercise of his office as President, he cannot be charged criminally. The immunity SCOTUS recognized today also extends to what they described as the "outer perimeter" of the President's official responsibilities, covering actions so long as they are “not manifestly or palpably beyond [his] authority." Blassingame v. Trump, 87 F. 4th 1, 13 (CADC).
SCOTUS' opinion today specifically excluded non-official actions taken by the President, and shockingly also specifically excluded actions taken for manifestly political purposes from having any level of Presidential immunity, making Sotomayor's statements in dissent totally ludicrous.
When Sotomayor presents her ridiculous hypotheticals by saying, "When he [a President] uses his official powers in any way, under the majority's reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy's Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power ? Immune . Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune", Sotomayor is lying to the American public. None of these actions when taken by any sitting president could conceivably be rationally defensible as the "official constitutionally protected acts of a sitting President", or even as defensible actions at the perimeter of presidential authority. The argument is legally vacuous and absurd.