> This ruling seems to open the door to a president being immune from, say, commanding SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival.

Immune from judicial prosecution.

Not immune from Congressional prosecution.

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This isn't a unique concept.

For example, if SEAL Team 6 improperly kills someone on a mission, they aren't prosecuted in criminal court; they are court-martialed.

There is accountability, but due to the unique nature of the profession, it has a specialized venue.

The Seal Team 6 example keeps getting batted around and that's unfortunate because it would be an extreme and obviously outrageous attack which would attract much unwanted attention.

Part of the ruling was that conversations between DOJ and President constitute the President's official duties and "therefore" (per the three judges appointed by Trump, one who expressed sympathies with Jan 6 rioters, and yet another whose wife was an active endorser and planner of aspects of the coup) those conversations are protected and cannot be entered as evidence in a criminal proceeding against the President.

The more insidious outcome is that the President can now, because these conversations are official, officially order the AG to investigate and prosecute political opponents.

Maybe some court can review it on down the line, years later. Given the number of judges appointed by Trump, maybe not. Either way, the federal government and rule of law was massively, severely crippled yesterday by the Supreme Court

You mean like Obama assassinating a US citizen?

They said in effect that using Seal Team 6 would be presumptively immune, and at that point the court would have to consider whether prosecuting a president for assassinating his rival would impose a chilling effect that would impair future presidents ability to command the armed forces. Since killing your domestic rival is not an important part of tactical wartime decisions, the government would easily overcome the presumption.

That's wrong. The President can still be impeached and convicted by Congress. What this prevents is the weaponization of partisan courts anywhere in the Country against a President for actions they took while in office.

I don't think this is the case. All military members of all branches are taught that they must not obey unlawful orders. Killing elected officials is clearly unlawful.

And the president is still subject to impeachment.

You should probably start widening your reading material. All the court is saying is Obama can't be sued for signing Obamacare into law.

If you have to resort to such an extreme scenario then the ruling probably is a good one.

I think we need to remember that Presidents have gotten away with a whole lot in the past. Many a blind eye before Trump came on the scene. Now that the seal has been broken, we were on course for a whole lot of these post presidency prosecutions in the future. I think the SC was sensitive to that and wanted to nip it in the bud.

> why not

Yeah, it seems this would hinge on whether it was done to protect democracy (official duty?) vs win an election (not but who knows by now). If Biden gives up on running anyway, that removes that question. Then it may not matter much because it's not clear which testimony, recording or other evidence might be admissible where. Then it may not matter because the issue is not even whether that would be illegal or not - just whether the president would have immunity in case it is illegal - and there is evidence - and someone attempts to charge something

Interesting rough overview of that question is here:

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/seal-team-6-assassination-hy...

Some positions seem more absurd than the usual. For example someone argues "SEAL team 6 would obviously not accept that illegal order" Which seems irrelevant every which way: presumes it's illegal and focuses too much on this one specific example. And accepts SEAL Team 6 for more than a meme - there are obviously lots of outfits other than that one.

Okay, but invert that hypothetical. The American President orders a lot of people killed, including sometimes U.S. citizens. More commonly, they order things that result in significant loss of life, which could be prosecuted as negligent or reckless homicide.

Should former presidents be subject to prosecution for those decisions? Remember that criminal laws are often extremely broad, and you can use conspiracy and other legal theories to make someone liable who didn’t perform the actual killing. Heck, part of the J6 prosecution against Trump somehow involves an Enron-era document shredding law.

What I feel like the dissent misses completely, which is quite ironic given Justice Sotomayor’s history in private practice, is that not having any sort of immunity means trusting every prosecutor in the country with pretty much unrestricted discretion to stitch together vague criminal laws into criminal charges against former presidents. Why should we place such trust in prosecutors?

> This ruling seems to open the door to a president being immune from, say, commanding SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival.

That is what the media - the same media who until a few days ago told you your current president was in no way diminished in his mental capacity - wants you to believe, they in turn were prompted by a 'progressive' judge - Sotomayor. It was clear from the outset that the media was lying about Biden and it is clear from the outset that this ploy about presidents being able to order hit jobs on their political rivals is a lie.

In short, think for yourself and you have a much better chance avoiding becoming a useful idiot as Lenin called those who blindly followed what the Party told them.

Did they forget that Biden is currently President? What's to stop the sitting President from just rounding up the former President and all of his supporters athen locking them in a cave until after the election?

Couldn't he just make up some BS about a national security threat to make it "official"?

Did we just become a monarchy?

SCOTUS said there was an extra procedural step, namely impeachment and conviction by the Senate. Ultimately the Senate would decide factually, whether that hypothetical action was an appropriate basis for further criminal prosecution.

Prosecuting a president fundamentally is a political act, and why would we think a random DC bureaucrat better qualified to make a consequential political act than the Senate itself?