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In a weirdly uncaptioned document, it was revealed last week that acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has birthed a tangled word salad that purports to “FOREVER” (twice and in all caps) prevent any part of the federal government from ever investigating “any matters” involving the Trump family and their corporate alter egos. Be it tax evasion, the corruption of foreign officials, or even hiring undocumented workers, Blanche would have us believe nothing can later be done by the law.

In the understandable rush to condemn the self-dealing inherent in the anti-weaponization fund, however, we may be missing another, hidden concern—the troubling claim to have general power to switch off law. It is more important to resist this claim than to heed the objections that have already been aired to Blanche’s declaration of civil immunity focused on a federal statute barring political interference with the IRS. For accepting Blanche’s claim of exceptional power would mean adding a new and destabilizing tool to the arsenal of presidents—one that not only lacks constitutional credentials, but will predictably be abused dramatically by executives of both parties.

Trump’s civil “pardon” is a legal nullity for a simple reason: Neither the executive branch nor the president have any constitutional power to bind future officials in this way. Since the government under Trump wasn’t about to investigate the president, Blanche’s order leaves things exactly........

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