Which part of the presidential majority opinion did you take issue with?
I found it grappled with some weighty issues and made a defensible position, that I expect will be refined when/if the case returns to the Supreme Court.
The framers understood the concept of immunity, and in at least one instance explicitly granted it in the constitution. They did not mention anything about immunity for the chief executive.
The line of argument about "bold and decisive action" is complete bullshit. The OLC has told previous presidents, in writing, that they are not immune from prosecution and that knowledge did not fatally impede their judgment. The president also has a fleet of lawyers at their disposal, and the DoJ conceded in oral argument that if the president obtained an opinion from the attorney general that a given act was indeed legal, the president would have immunity for that act via estoppel by entrapment.
The opinion does almost nothing to establish what is and is not an official act for the purposes of this new immunity. This has become a hallmark of the Roberts court; making a power grab by writing an opinion that rests on laughably malleable language ("major questions", "deeply rooted in tradition", "official acts"). You can just wait until your friends appeal the cases that didn't go your way, grant cert because of course you get to pick your own dock, and laugh all the way to the bank.
The cherry on top is the part prohibiting even the introduction of evidence relating to official acts. If the president openly takes a cartoon burlap sack of money in exchange for a pardon, the standard set out in the opinion is that you cannot introduce any evidence pertaining to the grant of the pardon, because the pardon power is a core constitutional authority of the executive.
The entire opinion is ahistorical, poorly reasoned, and profoundly unwise.
> The opinion does almost nothing to establish what is and is not an official act for the purposes of this new immunity. This has become a hallmark of the Roberts court...
That was the part I found most wise. Given the polarization of the issue, avoiding commiting anything to specific and tossing it back to lower courts seemed a decent middle ground.
If/when it comes back up and the specifics are declared, then I'll decide.
My opinion is that Roberts may be waiting for Thomas to retire, and is trying to tread water by throwing the more staunchly conservatives temporary bones, lest they etch bad precedent into stone.
