President Trump’s impeachment trial is due to wrap up this week, and the Republican-dominated Senate is expected to acquit him after hearing a case built by his lawyer, Harvard professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz. It might be a victory for the Republicans.

But they made a mistake in accepting Dershowitz’s interpretation of the Constitution, and the effects of so doing will likely be felt for years to come.

In his efforts to get Trump off the hook, Dershowitz argues that a president who disregards the will of Congress and requests a “quid pro quo” from a foreign government to bolster his reelection prospects is not impeachable—if he believes that his reelection is in the public interest. Dershowitz’s central thesis is that the founding fathers only deemed serious crimes as impeachable conduct. But that doesn’t include abusing power or breaking the law, which is what a nonpartisan federal watchdog found that Trump did by withholding foreign aid previously approved by Congress.

Dershowitz then drew a comparison between Trump’s actions and those of Abraham Lincoln who, during the U.S. Civil War, allowed Union soldiers to return home to vote in elections. Ostensibly, this helped ensure his victory, and Lincoln seemed to think this was in the public interest of winning the war. Yet allowing citizens to exercise their democratic rights was arguably in the public interest regardless of whether it also benefited Lincoln. And Dershowitz might instead have argued, along similar lines, that Trump’s actions were in the public interest of exposing potential wrongdoing by a former vice president and current presidential contender, regardless of whether doing so happens to also benefit Trump politically. But that isn’t the argument he made, and isn’t the one the Republicans will accept by acquitting Trump.

If we did live in a world where disregarding the will of Congress called for impeachment, then impeachment proceedings should’ve also been brought against all the presidents who bypassed Congress and acted of their own accord. And Trump could’ve been impeached for a whole lot more than just his actions regarding Ukraine, anyway—perhaps for unilaterally pulling troops out of Syria and leaving the United States’ Kurdish allies exposed to a Turkish invasion, or for ordering a fatal strike on Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani without congressional approval.

Of course, Trump isn’t the first president to act this way, and he certainly won’t be the last. Republicans are right to cynically note that Trump’s Democrat opponents only tried impeaching him when he went after their party’s frontrunner candidate, Joe Biden. Even so, this type of behavior by a president should still be curtailed, not given the seal of approval. But that’s precisely what Congress’s acceptance of Dershowitz’s terrible reasoning will do.

And Republicans ought to want those powers to be limited, considering the precedent Dershowitz’s argument is setting for the extension of executive capability. It seems they’re all-too-ready to forget how quickly the tables could be turned on the GOP.

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California must do more to allow ex-offenders find work Imagine a President Alexandria Ocascio-Cortez facing electoral disaster after her “Green New Deal” tanks the treasury, leaves Americans jobless, and cripples communities with high taxes and power bills. Imagine if she asked foreign governments to dig up dirt on her opponents and withheld aid until her administration acquired the intel, since her reelection is obviously in the public interest of tackling the climate emergency. By placing future presidents above the law, Republicans are proposing to sign off on powers that’ll gut their congressional ability to hold the executive accountable.

They should think twice about that.

For his part, Dershowitz is simply doing his job as a lawyer by trying to get his client off the hook. But pleading that presidents be free to defy Congress and do as they please if they think their reelections are in the national interest simply isn’t an argument that Republicans will be rooting for when the shoe is on the other foot.

Satya Marar is a Washington, D.C.-based policy analyst for Reason Foundation.