I understand that in theory but what is to stop an impeached president from citing this decision as the reason why an impeachment is not valid? I guess I’m asking the extent to which this muddies the waters of the remedy.
Since impeachment is the constitutional route to convict a president, they can't argue about this case affecting it.
The immunity is conditional on impeachment being a thing.
But doesn’t it become a circular argument (beyond what we’ve already witnessed) when a legitimate argument for voting against impeachment is that any official act is not a crime, now sanctioned by the SC?
It could be used as an argument in the future, but one could argue that the constitution makes it clear that is is for High Crimes and Misdemeanors, so whether it was an official act or not would be irrelevant
THAT BEING SAID, if a president was in impeachment process for an unofficial act, but Congress absolves them, stating it as official acts, and someone tries to prosecute them after their term, a court may argue that Congress set the precedent of it being an official act.
