Did the Supreme Court just legalize assassination by SEAL Team 6?

Democrats have made a lot of fantastic claims in the past week about recent Supreme Court decisions.

The holding in Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy “ lit a match and tossed it into dozens of federal agencies .”

The Loper Bright v. Raimondo case literally killed the administrative state .

And now, according to Justice Sonia Sotomayor, after Trump v. United States, it is now legal for the president of the United States to order Navy SEAL Team 6 to assassinate political rivals.

Her hissy fit reads as follows:

“The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world. When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.”

Where to begin?

For starters, the majority opinion specifically deals with bribery, noting: “The prosecutor may point to the public record to show the fact that the President performed the official act. And the prosecutor may admit evidence of what the President allegedly demanded, received, accepted, or agreed to receive or accept in return for being influenced in the performance of the act.”

And what the president “demanded, received, accepted, or agreed to receive or accept in return for being influenced” would definitely be an unofficial act, which the majority opinion quite clearly holds presidents have no immunity on.

Turning to ordering Navy SEALs to assassinate political opponents, such an order would clearly be illegal for any Navy SEAL to carry out. Federal law both limits the president’s power to use the military domestically and makes it a crime for service members to follow an illegal order.

As much as Sotomayor and her Democratic allies may wish to fearmonger on this point, the majority in no way expanded a president's right to act. As the majority writes:

“No matter the context, the President’s authority to act necessarily stem[s] either from an act of Congress or from the Constitution itself.’ … If the President claims authority to act but in fact exercises mere ‘individual will’ and ‘authority without law,’ the courts may say so. Youngstown, 343 U.S., at 655 (Jackson, J., concurring). In Youngstown, for instance, we held that President Truman exceeded his constitutional authority when he seized most of the Nation’s steel mills.”

The majority in no way overturned Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer. It remains very much the case that when presidents act, the courts will look to see if they have the legal authority to take such an action and stop them if they don’t.

And when determining whether or not a president can be held criminally accountable for his acts, whether or not he had authority to undertake that action is key.

“When the President acts pursuant to ‘constitutional and statutory authority,’ he takes official action to perform the functions of his office,” the majority writes. “And some Presidential conduct — for example, speaking to and on behalf of the American people … certainly can qualify as official even when not obviously connected to a particular constitutional or statutory provision.”

Turning to the facts of Trump’s case, the majority notes that Trump’s “private scheme with private actors,” including his use of “campaign staff” to create alternative slates of electors for Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, was unofficial conduct that he could be held criminally liable for.

Sotomayor leaves this fact out. If a president can be punished for trying to create an alternative slate of electors, then surely he can also be criminally liable for ordering the assassination of the real electors.

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