WWhat is presidential immunity?

[Anonymous]

[Syntosi]

Well, according to the SCOTUS decision it breaks into three categories.

First is the powers given to the president by the constitution which they can now use without restraint and given automatic legal immunity. I presume things like the control over the military falls within this category which means the president can now order the military to murder US citizens (like a political rival) while maintaining legal immunity.

The 2nd category is "official acts". These are things the president does in their official capacity as president. For example accepting bribes from foreign leaders I think would fall into this category and in this case. SCOTUS decided that the president has an assumed legal immunity for these which means that you would require some extremely compelling evidence to even argue that you can legally convict the president in the first place.

3rd category is "unofficial acts" which is things the president does outside of being the president and is afforded no special protection.

The problem here mainly comes from that the president can always just claim that what they did was in an official capacity even when its not and it becomes very difficult to prove otherwise and if you can't prove it was not in an official capacity then no evidence matters and the president is just presumed immune and the case is dropped.

Personally I do not expect any president to be convicted of a crime as long as this decision is upheld. While it technically does not grant total immunity, in reality its basically as good as one. As one of the dissenting judges in SCOTUS said, USA no longer has a president, it has a king.

[ProbablyClueless]

The easiest way to understand presidential immunity is understand it as an extremely limited freedom the president has to do certain things that would ordinarily break the law, in order to make sure that other people uphold the law and/or conform to the national interest. He/she is allowed to do those things in the specific context of the Presidency and within his/her duties as President.

The President's job is to make sure that laws written by Congress are faithfully carried out.

[Anonymous]

It means if he wants to murder political rivals like Putin does, he can't go to jail for it.

[Anonymous]

Its called Sovereign immunity one of the oldest powers of goverment. Indeed the 11th amendment was passed simply to keep the federal goverment from trying to strip it from State Governments.

[Dr_Lovejoy]

It means a president has both civil and criminal immunity for any of their Presidential acts, or actions taken while President.

[gorydetails]

It’s when a president is exposed to a virus or bacteria but the president’s white blood cells destroy them before they make him sick.

[Anonymous]

Being able to keep classified documents in your garage.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/hcW-r3I_obY