While it is tempting to conclude a US Supreme Court stacked by former President Donald Trump has handed the now convicted felon an unbeatable defence for the many crimes and misdemeanours he is alleged to have committed while in office it's not that simple.
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Although the court's ruling will delay President Trump's sentencing following his recent conviction, and his trials on other matters, until after election day, he does not have a "get-out-of-jail free" card.
The complete judgement runs to 119 pages and includes a majority decision, a decision "concurring in part" by Justice J Barrett, and a strongly worded dissenting report from justices Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson who vigorously disagreed with the majority ruling.
That was that a president "may not be prosecuted for exercising his core constitutional powers, and he is entitled, at a minimum, to a presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts".
But, and it is a very big but, the majority ruled there is no immunity from prosecution for unofficial acts.
The justices cited a previous Supreme Court ruling on civil proceedings brought against President Clinton by Paula Jones in support of this.
"Although presidential immunity is required for official actions to ensure that the president's decision making is not distorted by the threat of future litigation stemming from those actions, that concern does not support immunity for unofficial conduct," the majority found.
Concurring in part Justice Barrett wrote that: "The constitution does not insulate presidents from criminal liability for official acts. But any statute regulating the exercise of executive power is subject to a constitutional challenge. A criminal statute is no exception. Thus, a president facing prosecution may challenge the constitutionality of a criminal statute as applied to official acts alleged in the indictment. If that challenge fails, however, he must stand trial."
Noting that their court "is a court of final review and not first view" the majority of the justices rejected lower court findings President Trump was not immune from prosecution for "official" acts.
"Because those courts categorically rejected any form of presidential immunity, they did not analyse the conduct alleged in the indictment to decide which of it should be categorised as official and which unofficial," they found.
On the face of it that seems fair enough. And that is why the question of which of President Trump's actions before and on January 6, 2020, were "official" and which were not has been referred to US District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan who is overseeing the case brought against the former POTUS by special counsel Jack Smith.
It is worth noting that Judge Chutkan was appointed by President Obama.
So, while what the Trump camp is deriding as "lawfare" will have less impact on the 2024 election than many Democrat's would have hoped, he certainly hasn't got off scot free.
While the Supreme Court found President Trump should not be prosecuted for asking Justice Department officials to launch investigations into alleged election fraud, he may yet be prosecuted for pressuring Mike Pence to reject the Electoral College vote.
There is also no presumption of immunity for his interactions with state officials, private citizens and others about election fraud and January 6.
The takeaway for Australia, which will hopefully one day become a republic, is that we need to choose our constitutional model very carefully.
The last thing this country needs is to open the door to a populist demagogue with unlimited and tyrannical powers.
