“Thank you again, thank you again,” Trump said, taking Roberts’s hand into both his own and shaking it vigorously. Then, as he began to step away, the president tapped Roberts on the arm in a gesture of buddy-buddy intimacy, and said: “Won’t forget.”

Supreme court watchers have wondered why Trump thanked the chief justice so effusively. Was it because the Roberts court had, exactly a year earlier, allowed Trump to stay on the electoral ballot even though he had inspired a violent mob attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021?

Could it have been that Roberts had written the ruling that immunised Trump from criminal prosecution for that January 6 insurrection and for any other criminal misdeed he might commit while in the White House?