So that's how the issue got presented to the SCOTUS - whether there is any immunity for any actions by the President, official or private. So the Court has to rule on both buckets of actions.

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And therein lies the madness.

The lower courts are trying to adjudicate this matter in a timely fashion given its criticality to the country. In fact, there are no immunities granted to the role of President in the original Constitution or any of its amendments. As Sonia Sotomayor pointed out in the hearing, there ARE references to immunity in several state Constitutions from the original thirteen states which predate the Constitution enacted in 1789. It's not like the parties who CREATED the Constitution were unfamiliar with the concept and "forgot" to include it. The lower court looked at the Constitution exactly like the majority of the Supreme Court CLAIMS to look at the Constitution when deciding issues and CORRECTLY found there is NO privilege of criminal immunity granted to Presidents,

* while in office
* after leaving office
* for criminal acts committed prior to office or after office
* for criminal acts committed while in office
* for "personal crimes" acting as an individual
* for "official crimes" acting as President

To avoid the defendant continually playing Constitutional whack-a-mole with the court, the court attempted to explicitly close off all potential pointless appeals by the defendant by explicitly itemizing all of the scenarios under which a Constitution with NO REFERENCE to Presidential criminal immunity would apply.

And now a majority of Justices all beholden to a Federalist Society world view that supports ever-increasing power for a President suddenly steps in using the "justification" of a lower court ruling outlining all of the "NO" scenarios to, in fact, turn that ruling on its head by launching a search for justifications to somehow FIND intent or the need for Presidential criminal immunity when there is ZERO support in the physical words of the Constitution, any legitimate history of the thinking of the original writers of the Constitution or in any legitimate reading of the larger legal history on this matter. As a history professor from Stanford put it, even the Founders at the time of the Revolution thought kings were bound by natural laws. It was the violation of those laws in the eyes of the founders that triggered our Revolution, not the fact that King George III was a king per se. The Supreme Court is literally working to create criminal immunity for a President which is part of no modern democracy's legal or historical underpinnings. In effect, the USSC is attempting to create a "super-king."

We are truly through the looking glass.


WTH