Several Supreme Court justices yesterday seemed disturbingly open to far too wide a scope of supposed presidential immunity from criminal prosecution. Almost nothing in the actual text of the Constitution provides for such immunity.

At oral argument in Trump v. United States, Justice Clarence Thomas asked the right question of Trump’s attorney, John Sauer: “Could you be more precise as to the source of this immunity?” Sauer answered that the constitutional source is the clause in Article II that says, “The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States.”