Jeffrey Toobin in NYT on President Trump’s assertion that former President Obama engaged in “treason” in connection with the investigation into Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election:

President Trump’s history of intemperate remarks has earned him a perverse kind of immunity; the more outrageous his statement, the faster it is often dismissed. But Mr. Trump doesn’t deserve this bloviator’s privilege. He’s not just the president, but, more to the point, he’s the overseer of an unusually compliant Justice Department, and his offhand condemnation of his predecessor is as significant as it is chilling. . . .

The absurdity of this investigation is underlined, too, by the fact that Mr. Obama is almost certainly immune from prosecution — thanks to Mr. Trump and the Supreme Court. In its decision last year in Trump v. United States, the court held that there was a presumption that former presidents could not be prosecuted for any “official” conduct during their time in office. The preparation and dissemination of intelligence findings are certainly official functions of the presidency, and accordingly, they would be off limits as the bases for any criminal charges.

But pointing this out seems almost unfair to Mr. Obama; it suggests that he would escape prosecution only because of the lamentable technicality established by the Supreme Court in the Trump case. The more important reason is simpler: Mr. Obama committed no crime.