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It would also be very easy for a court to decide that executing a political rival is not an official act and deny the President immunity.
What do you think the odds are for this Supreme Court to declare e.g. that shredding official documents (or moving them to the president's private property) is an official act?
Again, citation needed. The whole problem today is that the category of immunity is so vague so as to be overly broad.
> It does not say that members of the military have immunity for following an unlawful order.
No, but it does say the President has an unreviewable pardon power to absolve them from any crime they are ordered by the President to commit.
> It would also be very easy for a court to decide that executing a political rival is not an official act and deny the President immunity.
It's now also very easy for a court to decide that it is. That is the problem.
Read the judgement. It's literally in the first pages.
> No, but it does say the President has an unreviewable pardon power to absolve them from any crime they are ordered by the President to commit.
A President can't pardon non-federal crimes or overturn the a conviction through impeachment as it would remove power from Congress and the Senate, which a President can't remove.
> It's now also very easy for a court to decide that it is. That is the problem.
Believing that ordering the assassination of elected officials would be considered lawful by judges is just so insane that it makes Alex Jones look like a legal scholar.
I read it. I read that it's absolute immunity in core function, which seems pretty damn broad to me. Can you explain how nonreviewable power over control of the military and DOJ fits the description of "limited"?
> A President can't pardon non-federal crimes
He won't need to -- the whole point of giving the President this broad unreviewable power was so that non federal officials couldn't harass the president by charging him with crimes for carrying out his official duties. Where again what constitutes an "official duty" is left up to SCOTUS.
> Believing that ordering the assassination of elected officials would be considered lawful by judges is just so insane that it makes Alex Jones look like a legal scholar.
The prospect of this very ruling was considered so insane by legal scholars so as to be implausible, and yet here we are!
Judges don't have to find the assassination of elected officials to be legal, they just have to find the Supreme Court doesn't allow them to use most of the evidence of that crime at trial, and that they must presume motive for the assassination was good. How do you prosecute that case? Can't subpoena any evidence because it wouldn't survive an "absolute immunity" challenge by the President's lawyers.
That is the implication of the plain text of this law, it's with Justice Sotomayor is worried about, and I think it's pretty beneath you to try to compare her vast level of expertise to Alex Jones.
That is a narrow standard. The only acts in this case which met that standard were discussions with Justice Department officials.
Everything else in this case was in fact remanded, and it remains within the power of the lower courts to deny Trump immunity on all other aspects of the case.
Your citation is exactly the bit that makes the President immune for directing Seal Team 6 to execute a political rival -- directing the military is within the President's "conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority". According to the Supreme Court, such a direction is now "absolute immunity from criminal prosecution".
