But the implications go beyond the impeachment trial itself. While we’ve all considered it inevitable that Trump would be acquitted, the manner in which the trial has proceeded is going to reverberate through the presidential election. Trump may now feel he has legal and constitutional permission to do literally anything to win in November.

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On Tuesday, Dershowitz made the preposterous claim that you can’t impeach a president for abusing his power, a position supported by no historical or legal record and viewed by every historian and legal scholar as not just obviously wrong but utterly bizarre. But Republican senators seized gleefully on the argument that even if Trump did everything he’s accused of, he still must be acquitted.

“Let’s say it’s true, okay?” said Indiana Sen. Mike Braun. “Dershowitz last night explained that if you’re looking at it from a constitutional point of view, that that is not something that is impeachable.”

Frank O. Bowman, a law professor and author of a recent book on the history of impeachment, called Dershowitz’s argument “complete nonsense that’s totally unsupported by any scholarship, anywhere.”

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But Dershowitz was just getting started. Returning to the Senate on Wednesday, Dershowitz made an argument so insane that not even Republican senators desperate to find any grounds to justify their acquittal vote could abide it.

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Now, Dershowitz argued, if the president believes that his own reelection is good for the country, as every president does, then he can do literally whatever he wants to advance that goal, including marshaling the resources of the U.S. government, and by definition, it cannot be impeachable.

“If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment,” Dershowitz said.

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Now imagine Trump sitting in the White House residence watching this on TV. He already believes his powers are virtually unlimited (“I have an Article II, where I have to the right to do whatever I want as president,” he has said). Now here’s a famous law professor telling him that, because his reelection is in the national interest, anything he does to make it happen is acceptable.

Who do you think Trump is going to believe: the guy telling him what he wants to hear, or a bunch of naysayers saying it’s not true?

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Keep in mind that some time ago Trump made clear that he is not just willing but eager to get assistance from foreign countries in his reelection campaign. While some of his defenders have tentatively allowed that it might not be a great thing to solicit (or coerce) foreign assistance for his campaign, Trump himself has never said that. To the contrary, he has publicly invited that assistance.

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And there are probably countries that won’t need to be coerced, like Trump tried to do to Ukraine. There’s Russia, of course, whose help for Trump’s campaign is a near-certainty. How about North Korea, or Turkey, or Hungary, or the Philippines, or any of the other countries ruled by authoritarians with whom Trump is so sympatico?

Might they see it in their own interest to give him a hand? Under Trump’s new rules they won’t even have to be sneaky about it; they can just call up the Oval Office and say “What do want us to do?”

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So imagine it's October, and we learn that, say, North Korea has mounted an effort to help the Trump campaign. Are Republicans going to condemn it? Demand an investigation? Call for retaliatory measures? Of course not.

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But soliciting foreign help is just the beginning. If after he’s acquitted Trump truly believes he has permission to do anything he wants because his reelection is in the national interest, the ways he could abuse his powers in the service of his campaign are limited only by his imagination.

How about ordering the attorney general to announce a criminal investigation into the Democratic nominee? How about having the Internal Revenue Service seize the homes of all Democratic elected officials? How about announcing that should anyone assassinate his opponent, he’d pardon the killer? How about ordering the Air Force to bomb Milwaukee so its residents couldn’t vote for his opponent?

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Well, he wouldn’t go that far, you might say. And maybe bombing Milwaukee might be going a little far. But do we really know how far Trump will go once he’s convinced himself there are no legal constraints on his actions?

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Before impeachment began, some Democrats argued that it was unwise because Trump would take his acquittal by cowed and cowardly Republicans in the Senate as a vindication. Others said that wasn’t a good-enough reason to ignore the responsibility to at least attempt to hold him accountable for his misdeeds. We now face the possibility that Trump will feel not just vindicated but utterly unleashed.

And the only constraint on him will be if the people around him can muster the courage to say, “Um, sir? Maybe that’s not such a good idea.” How reassured does that make you feel?