Presidential Immunity
Last month SCOTUS entered a ruling on Presidential Immunity. The ruling only states that Presidential Immunity is real. It does not reach anything else. A direct quote:
"We conclude that under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of Presidential power requires that a former President have some immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts during his tenure in office. At least with respect to the President’s exercise of his core constitutional powers, this immunity must be absolute. As for his remaining official actions, he is also entitled to immunity. At the current stage of proceedings in this case, however, we need not and do not decide whether that immunity must be absolute, or instead whether a presumptive immunity is sufficient."
They (rightly, as it is Congress' job) do not tell us:
What the core constitutional powers are
outside of core constitutional powers, what powers get 1) no immunity, 2) qualified immunity, and 3) absolute immunity
whether the case brought deals with actions that are immune or not
a litany of other things too long to describe here
SCOTUS framed things quite well in another direct quote:
"We granted certiorari to consider the following question: 'Whether and if so to what extent does a former President enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office[?]'"
SCOTUS wholly refuse to answer anything further. Another, extremely important, note is SCOTUS does not have the power to rule upon or throw out the case because Original Jurisdiction lies with the District Court. They have Appellate Jurisdiction to hear questions of error regarding the Lower Court's actions (or inaction). In this case, again, a direct quote would say much:
"The District Court declined to decide whether the indicted conduct involved official acts."
and
"Like the District Court, the D. C. Circuit declined to analyze the actions described in the indictment to determine whether they involved official acts."
Then they remanded it back to the Lower Court for further analysis. All this ruling implies is that Courts must force the prosecution to define the indicted conduct specifically before ruling against a Defendant. This is a restatement of Due Process which is the only clause to be mentioned twice in our Constitution (5th and 14th Amendments) as Due Process is THAT IMPORTANT to We, the People's, protections against a tyrannical Government.
I think part of the reasoning here is that if they rule that Presidents can be indicted after leaving office for any reason at any time, it would open up a can of worms that would destroy the Office of the Presidency in its entirety. Who would take that job knowing they could be thrown in jail directly thereafter because a political opponent now holds the DoJ in their hands? The job is already underpaid, we cannot put further burdens upon it. In other words, the President is a normal citizen after leaving office, and without immunity, it opens that normal citizen up (by and through their perceived or actual fame) to further litigation which (in turn) renders the Equal Protection clause ineffective in their specific case.
This happened to me a while ago on a completely different, and much, much, much smaller level. The Government said basically "Mr. Henry is in trouble for conduct." When I pressed them on what specific conduct, they fell short. I fought and won the case by myself when every attorney around me told me I was screwed because the system was coming for me. Due Process and these kinds of rulings are extremely important to me because of how personal it is. For 5 years, my life literally depended upon my understanding of this kind of law.