In the abstract, the Roberts Court's argument may seem compelling in practice, it is absurd. We can now see what its grant of immunity has produced: an attorney general who is little more than a mob lawyer, a Justice Department that is lctle more than a corrupt law firm with one client, and an entire legal system subsumed by the whims of a president who can spare his friends and persecute his enemies.

Under the new conservative consensus on presidential power, Trump is welcome to refuse to. investigate when government agents shoot Americans in the face, and he is welcome to try to charge their loved ones with crimes. He can openly blackmail government officials to manipulate the economy or to silence political opposition. No one can stop him from directing the Justice Department to indict his enemies for non-crimes while ignoring or pardoning the actual crimes of his political allies. He is free to be a tyrant, because the boss is the boss. But to me, it seems unlikely that the founding generation, in rebelling against a monarch, was looking to replace him with an even more wretched class of despot.