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Notes -
Trump v. United States, the presidential immunity opinion, dropped this morning. In broad strokes it goes like this:
1. For those acts that are pursuant to the President's "conclusive and preclusive" authority there is absolute immunity.
2. For those acts which are official acts by the President but not covered by (1) there is a presumption of immunity that can only be overcome by showing the prosecution would pose no "dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch."
3. For those acts which are unofficial there is no immunity.
4. Those acts for which the President has immunity cannot be used as evidence to demonstrate any element of a crime for which the President would not have immunity.
I think it's just incredible that the six justices in the majority looked at the Navy-SEALs-assassinate-a-rival hypothetical and went "yep, sounds right, no liability." Roberts' majority opinion even mentions the President's orders to the armed forces as one of the things that falls under (1).
I think the way is clear. Biden orders Trump, the six justices in the majority, and let's say the next 2-3 top Republican candidates whacked (just for safety). He probably gets impeached and removed but can't go to jail (thanks SCOTUS!) Harris takes over as President and I think it's unlikely she would also get impeached. Dems don't want to hand the presidency to Mike Johnson. That gives Harris plenty of time to stack the court. Republican convention in disarray due to the deaths of their prominent candidates. Biden obviously out, he'd be ineligible anyway if impeached and removed. Dems probably dump Harris to create a clean break with Biden admin, clearing the way for Whitmer/Newsom/Pritzker/whoever.
The above is fan fiction, of course.
I think the court wants to avoid the courts being used to prosecute the previous President whenever a new President is elected. Many parts of the executive and the judiciary enjoy some form of immunity from the law when carrying out their duties. If you treated the executive purely as normal citizens I think government would become non-functional. I suspect maybe Libertarians would advocate for this but I don't think it would have mainstream support. For example if the executive enforces a law that is latter found to be unconstitutional but has arrested people for violating the law if we treated the executive as normal citizens then surely the executive should face justice for false imprisonment.
As a libertarian I would happily settle for "courts find thing unconstitutional, government officials make minor or no changes continue doing it, they go to jail".
Right now it just seems like officials get to play a game where if they lose in court they get a stern warning, and they can seemingly keep getting stern warnings forever, the only escalation might be that some people suing them start getting settlements paid with taxpayer dollars. The official in question might get fired, but only if they aren't part of a public sector union (why do we allow those again?)
For this specific case, I'm not really a fan of going after publicly elected officials. And you don't really have to in order to maintain rule of law. If Biden orders a seal team six hit on a rival and you can guarantee that everyone except Biden in that chain of command will be sent to jail or executed for carrying out the order then you can make sure the order is never carried out. My vague and bad understanding of military orders is that is mostly how things already work.
How can you make sure of that when Biden also has the pardon power?
Presidents can't pardon state crimes such as murder.
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