A small dollop of restraint emerged this week. President Trump, it was said, was going to stop fired FBI Director James Comey from testifying based upon a claim of executive privilege. Nixonian? Yes. Likely to succeed? No. A doctrine protecting military secrets and open investigations cannot be used to hide wrongdoing.

But a bogus executive privilege is likely just an opening salvo in Trump’s efforts to trip up Special Counsel Robert Mueller. This is wrong. Using executive power to impede Mueller’s work is contrary to the presidential oath “to take care that the laws are faithfully executed.”

Law enforcement is an executive duty not constitutionally shared. The Congress can override a veto of new laws, but what was to be done when a sitting president flouts existing law? What specifically might be done when the president is alleged to be a cultivated Russian sympathizer piggybacking his electoral efforts on the theft of emails and other intellectual property? Or when it is alleged that the president is abusing his office for personal gain, offering to trade foreign-policy sanctions for personal investments in Russian oil fields or a loan from a Russian government bank to prop up a bad real estate investment in New York?

The framers specified impeachment as the check upon abuse of presidential power. It was unseemly to the founders to think a sitting president could be criminally charged prior to removal. So treason, bribery and other high crimes and misdemeanors is the basis for that removal. But does this mean the country is left in the hands of the suspected wrongdoer during investigation?

Absolutely not, says the 25th Amendment. The amendment provides a basis for leave of absence in the face of physical or mental disability, such as when Reagan transferred power to George H.W. Bush during his two surgical procedures.

But the amendment also allows, arguably envisions, temporary presidential leave of absence when the possibility of abuse of office is so serious as to merit appointment of a special counsel. A president under deep suspicion can’t continue calling the shots, as that would violate an axiom older than the republic itself — namely, that one cannot be a judge in one’s own case.

The vice president may involuntarily put the president on the sidelines as long as the vice president has the agreement of a majority of the Cabinet or a majority of such other “body” as Congress may provide. In this instance, the alternative entity might logically be the former living presidents. While not nonpartisan, Trump’s living predecessors have more credibility than a Cabinet lacking meaningful diversity.

In sum, the president should be given a leave of absence until his name is cleared — or not. The president can step back into the Oval Office at any time if more than one-third of both houses of Congress agree.

The people elected Donald Trump not to watch him squiggle out of trouble, but to enact a positive legislative program fixing the health care mess, equalizing taxes, and responsibly addressing education, immigration and the environment. President Trump should not object to his hand-picked vice president being “acting president” to get some real work done. To not do so would ironically give the Russians what they couldn’t get by hacking — a hobbled democracy.

Douglas W. Kmiec, a former U.S. ambassador, served as legal counsel to President Ronald Reagan. He is a professor of constitutional law at Pepperdine University School of Law in Malibu.