Consequently, the arguments from Team Trump that the president cannot commit obstruction are wrong. Worse than wrong, they are extremely counterproductive. They intimate that the president’s position is that, because he may not be prosecuted in a criminal court, he is above the law. It is as if he were claiming he cannot be held accountable for abuses of executive power.

That is an obnoxious suggestion. The natural effect of making an argument that offends people is that it vastly increases their incentive to cut you down to size. It makes them much more open to the idea that the president should be aggressively investigated by an independent prosecutor. They will not abide Team Trump’s contention that the president cannot be prosecuted, because what they think they hear Team Trump saying is that he is immune from all accountability – which he most emphatically is not.

In our system, the independent check on the president is Congress, not a prosecutor. The process for reining in executive abuse is impeachment, not indictment.

Trump’s advocates need not be afraid of this. It is constitutional reality, so there’s no sense hiding from it. As a practical matter, moreover, Trump has clearly not committed impeachable offenses, and he is obviously not going to be impeached and removed from office. There is therefore no reason to be paralyzed by the I-word.