President Donald Trump’s dumping of Attorney General Pam Bondi on Thursday was the kind of shrewd personnel change one might expect from an executive who made a name for himself by firing people. Bondi presided over the unraveling of the Department of Justice. Under her leadership, the DOJ has lost the respect of judges and juries, its ranks have been decimated by lawyers fleeing like rats from a sinking ship, and it racked up embarrassing losses at an unheard of clip. Almost impressively, Bondi has turned the Justice Department from an august symbol of the rule of law into a limping, corrupt enterprise.

But Bondi wasn’t ousted for her disastrous leadership. Her incompetence, magnified in her handling of the Epstein files, in which she managed to make sure a bad story for her boss wouldn’t go away, contributed to Trump’s growing frustration. But Trump reportedly soured on Bondi because she failed to failed to lock up his political enemies. The irony of the situation, of course, is that Trump’s own involvement is what doomed not just those sham prosecutions, but ultimately the DOJ itself.

Trump spent his first term pining for a Justice Department that would protect him, and an attorney general who would serve like his personal attorney—or hit man. In his second term, Bondi willingly tried to fill that role. But her tenure is living proof of a problem whose origin ultimately lies with the rightwing push for a so-called unitary executive who controls every inch of the executive branch: that sort of presidential power breeds distrust, corruption, and ultimately failure.

Before Trump returned to the White House, the Supreme Court granted him criminal immunity for official acts. That instantly infamous opinion, Trump v. United States, also emphasized that the Justice Department was the president’s personal playground. The attorney general was no longer the nation’s chief law enforcement official but, in the words of Chief Justice John Roberts, “acts as the President’s ‘chief law enforcement officer.’” Trump could direct investigations and prosecutions; he could even utilize the department’s prosecutorial powers in furtherance of crimes, including politically motivated investigation and charges.

This Supreme Court constructed an all-powerful presidency on the premise that such power would breed both decisive leadership and democracy accountability. In Trump, Roberts wrote that the Constitution’s framers “deemed an energetic executive essential to…‘the........

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