In the lower court, the appeals court, one of the judges gave the Seal Team 6 killing his political opponent example, and the argument from Trump's lawyers was "Yes, he would have immunity for that as it would be an official act as president."
They argued the only way he could be charged with a crime for that was if Congress and the Senate successfully impeached him for it. That argument favors the idea that if your party controls the House or Senate, well, you can't get impeached and so then you could commit the crime and would have absolute immunity from prosecution.
I believe the Supreme is in agreement with that position. They stretched what the president has immunity for beyond executive powers under the Constitution to anything deemed an official act...which basically comes down to if the president himself sees it as an official duty. Trump saw telling the woman he sexually assaulted, E. Jean Carroll, that she was a liar and ugly part of his official duties. That was most certainly not, but even Merrick Garland's Justice department was going to back him on that.
Meaning, basically, all a president has to say is they feel they were acting in their official capacity, that they had to do it, and boom...it becomes an official act. The theory was, once out of office, you could then bring charges but now the argument is, no you can't because the bar is you now have to start with the presumption that EVERYTHING a president does while in office is considered an official act and he or she has a reason they would have done it so it must be allowed and not prosecuted.
This was Nixon's theory. There are Republicans that have always backed this idea. If the president decides to do something, he must be allowed to act no matter what it is and have no accountability.
It goes above and beyond a police officer having to have discretion to act in situations they get put in.
A police officer has no say really in what is deemed an official act, but a POTUS does, if the POTUS says it is official, it is now very difficult to get over the bar of saying it is not. That's where the problem lies as I see it.
Under this ruling, and Clarence Thomas added to the opinion saying as much, Trump can't be charged with anything related to what happened on January 6th nor the classified documents at Mar-a-Lago case and Thomas argues Jack Smith has no business prosecuting him.
Trump's lawyers will now move to dismiss these cases, and now likely under this ruling, these cases will be dismissed. This is despite the fact that the crime of obstruction that Trump committed in the documents case occurred after he was president...not while in office. I am sure that the dismissal will be based on the idea that when Trump ordered the documents be taken, he was president and thus is immune from being charged for taking them and any crime committed after he did.
