What might be spooking the January 6 Committee? We ask because it seems to be coming down with a sudden case of the nerves — or conscience — over whether to make a “criminal referral” against President Trump. Its chairman, Congressman Bennie Thompson, in a startling moment,  told reporters Monday that the committee would not be making to the Justice Department a formal criminal referral of Mr. Trump or anyone else.

“That’s not our job,” Mr. Thompson said. “Our job is to look at the facts and the circumstances around January 6th, what caused it, and make recommendations after that.” Forgive our perfervid imagination, but it’s almost as if the normally unflappable Mr. Thompson had seen some kind of poltergeist — maybe, flitting among the Capitol’s columns, a free-floating, full torso, vaporous apparition* of, say, John Adams, grinning with his bad teeth.

We speculate about Adams because he was the author of the clearest — and earliest — statement ever put to parchment in respect of separated powers. That was Article XXX of the constitution of Massachusetts. Written in 1780, the Massachusetts Constitution is, the Bay State likes to boast, the oldest functioning written constitution in the world. It prefigures the federal constitution framed seven years later at Philadelphia.

“In the government of the commonwealth,” Article XXX says, “the legislative department shall never exercise the executive and judicial powers, or either of them; the executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them; the judicial shall never exercise the legislative and executive powers, or either of them; to the end” — and here are the famous words — “that it may be a government of laws, and not of men.”

Meaning, that Massachusetts would not be run by dictators or rogue legislators. As if to mark the point, Mr. Thompson’s remarks were promptly contradicted by his vice chairwoman, Congresswoman Liz Cheney. “The January 6th Select Committee has not issued a conclusion regarding potential criminal referrals. We will announce a decision on that at an appropriate time,” Ms. Cheney declared on Twitter.

Plus, too, Congresswoman Elaine Luria went further, according to the Washington Post, which quotes her as tweeting that “if criminal activity occurred, it is our responsibility to report that activity to the DOJ.” Congressman Adam Schiff tried to palm off on our noble public the idea that the Committee hasn’t had a discussion on the issue. All of which presages, the Post reckons, “the dilemma” that lawmakers face over the question of a criminal referral.

The Washington Post suggests that it might be that the committee has already violated separated powers by making a filing in federal court. That was in a dispute over whether it should be able to peruse emails of one of President Trump’s lawyers, John Eastman. It’s the filing in response to which a United States district judge, David Carter, claimed that Mr. Trump “more likely than not” committed crimes to stay in power.

“So, in some sense,” the Post quotes Congressman Jamie Raskin, another member of the January 6 Committee, as saying about a criminal referral, “we’ve already done it.” He’s no dummy. Nor is Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, who is quoted by the Washington Post as having said in March that, as the Post paraphrases her, “she was certain the Justice Department had read Carter’s opinion.” The cat, it seems, is out of the bag.

No wonder the January 6 committee is nervous. Its members know that it is running afoul of the constitutional guardrails. It has no business sitting with only such members as agree with the Democratic side of this debate. Nor investigating an individual, for criminal matters, a forbidden attainder, even against Mr. Trump. It has no business staffing up with prosecutors and doing the work of the Justice Department. But, hey, whom are you going to call?

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* “Ghostbusters,” 1984.