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".
Years of zero consequence. Imagine what an egomaniacal, unethical, vengeful, unempathetic, asshole could do with all of that power.
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?
The courts should decide if that act is legally permitted, but it would be a tough pull to think that he should be personally responsible for that, including potential jail time.
Now egregious cases that fall outside of the reasonable expectations of the role of the President. Sure, those should go to the courts. But I don't think this case prevents that. Most of what Trump did after the election, IMO, was clearly as a candidate, not a President.
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.
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.
Trying to blackmail Ukraine into providing dirt on his political rival by withholding congressional funding, getting rid of Comey, and requesting that some additional votes for him should be found are the top 3 that come to my mind.
I couldn't give two shits about extramarital sex, and I honestly would have expected him to write about said sex on twitter sooner than cover it up. I don't think the campaign donors would have been too steamed about where that money went either. It's not like him dipping into his other charities (which I find more despicable than hush money.)
I wonder why this was the charge that stuck.
The hush payment would not even have been an issue if they didn't use campaign money or Cohen as middle man, that's the illegal part. If Trump just wrote a check directly it would not have been an issue and we would likely never know about it unless NDAs were broken.
It was first. It was also relatively simple in both law and fact, so there were fewer opportunities for delay. Even so, it was more than a year from indictment to conviction.
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.
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.
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.