This does not mean, including from the majority opinion, that anything the President does is immune from challenges. If the President directs a cover-up for his campaign (Nixon) or directs a Governor to find enough ballots for him to win or directs "alternate electors" via fraud (Trump), this is not an official action. Trump's lawyers admitted as much in the oral arguments.
Presidents are effectively kings now, won’t be long until one declares himself one for good.
This would be challenged in court by the victims of the President's spying, and the court would ultimately decide whether or not the spying constituted an "official act".
No, we do not. That's the whole point of the checks and balances. If his political opponents are able to prove their case before the courts, showing that the president broke the law, then they should be able to.
This ruling is meant to protect the office from precisely these types of politically motivated attacks.
This has always been possible (Nixon v. Fitzgerald) but has never happened. Choose whatever reason you want: any amount of decency, any sense of shame, low odds of winning, likelihood of terrible retribution from generally good people.
It feels like once an act is to be classified as unofficial, then evidence of same cannot be covered, regardless of whether it's personal or not.
So maybe whittled down to "You can't go on an investigation of the President's personal/private documents because you have a suspicion of an unofficial act." Which feels more like the Supreme Court's intent.
Hrm. Surely the implication you're outlining here is that the President will be breaking the law while carrying out "the roles of the office"? Is that not a concern?
Why?
In the UK we of course have no president; all government actions can be subjected to judicial review, whichever minister was in charge. Judicial review is a civil procedure, not a criminal one. All the court can do is order the government to reverse the unlawful decision, and make good its consequences.
Trump's counsel did admit this, but the opinion contains no such carve out. It says "he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts" and declines to define what separates an official from an unofficial act, leaving it up to courts on a case-by-case basis. The dissent--rightly--points out that this is way more than Trump asked for:
> Inherent in Trump’s Impeachment Judgment Clause argument is the idea that a former President who was impeached in the House and convicted in the Senate for crimes involving his official acts could then be prosecuted in court for those acts. See Brief for Petitioner 22 (“The Founders thus adopted a carefully balanced approach that permits the criminal prosecution of a former President for his official acts, but only if that President is first impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate”). By extinguishing that path to overcoming immunity, however nonsensical it might be, the majority arrives at an official- acts immunity even more expansive than the one Trump argued for. On the majority’s view (but not Trump’s), a former President whose abuse of power was so egregious and so offensive even to members of his own party that he was impeached in the House and convicted in the Senate still would be entitled to “at least presumptive” criminal immunity for those acts.
