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IMO this is a bullshit story right-wingers tell themselves to rationalize power grabs. Throw in regular ominous remarks about the dangers of prosecuting (their) politicians just so people understand and it looks more like a story of incredible Democratic naivete where they thought a conservative judiciary would act in a principled manner rather than closing ranks to protecting their guy.
They didn't close ranks, though; they left most of the charges against Trump potentially open.
They left the possibility of charges potentially open, but kneecapped the ability to actually exercise them. Discussions with his staff, a.k.a. the people he would likely confer with with regards to committing the crime, are largely off limits. You need to prove that they are not official acts to gather evidence, which to me seems to say that you need to prove the crime before you are allowed to gather the evidence to prove the crime. You're all but disallowed from questioning his motives, when motives are a massive part of what makes most things a crime.
Uh, that's not what the opinion says. It says that a court has to hear whether the sort of conduct alleged is immune prior to discovery and trial, that immune conduct can't be probed for evidence regarding prosecution for non-immune conduct, and that improper motives for immune conduct do not cancel the immunity.
The first of those is basically a motion-to-dismiss hearing, where the court says "suppose everything the prosecution says is true; are these actions actually a crime?" The prosecution doesn't need to produce evidence for one of those, since all its claims are presumed true for this purpose anyway, so it's appropriate for it to happen before discovery. (To give an example, suppose a prosecutor brings a case against me alleging that I walked to the supermarket. I file a motion to dismiss, pointing out that walking to the supermarket is not illegal. There's a hearing, at which it is assumed that I did indeed walk to the supermarket, on the question of whether walking to the supermarket is illegal. The judge finds that the alleged conduct is not illegal, and dismisses the case because there's no crime alleged.)
The second basically says that once the court's decided what's immune and not, discovery only takes place into the non-immune actions, not the immune ones. Note that it does not say that discovery can't take place into official actions, only into immune ones (i.e. ones where absolute immunity applies, or ones where presumptive immunity applies and the court has found that presumption upheld); discovery can proceed against actions where the court has found presumptive immunity to be rebutted.
The third says that immunity is based on the type of act rather than the motive, so you can't declare otherwise-immune conduct non-immune because of an alleged improper motive - but types of act that are declared to not be immune can still have their motives investigated.
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