In a landmark immunity case last year, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts argued that sweeping presidential immunity was necessary to prevent an executive branch that "cannibalizes" itself. Roberts claimed that without such protection, a president would be "free to prosecute his predecessors, yet unable to boldly and fearlessly carry out his duties for fear that he may be next."

But that sweeping protection might have just been thrown away by President Donald Trump, two experienced federal law experts warned Saturday.

The Supreme Court's decision has had unintended consequences, wrote ex-acting assistant attorney general for national security, Mary McCord, and Andrew Weissmann, a former general counsel for the F.B.I., in the New York Times. Both have worked under presidents from both parties, including Trump.

Rather than preventing the weaponization of prosecutions, the court has seemingly unleashed a new form of executive power manipulation, they wrote.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, while partially supporting the majority opinion, offered a critical caveat. She wrote that the president's constitutional protection from prosecution should be "narrow" and that the Constitution "does not vest every exercise of executive power in the president's sole discretion."

The court's ruling dramatically expanded presidential immunity, concluding that "the executive branch has 'exclusive authority and absolute discretion' to decide which crimes to investigate and prosecute." This interpretation allows a president to request investigations even when those investigations are "shams" or "proposed for an improper purpose," the lawyers wrote.

Reflecting on historical precedent, the article recalls a time when even the appearance of impropriety was scandalous. In 2016, a brief airport tarmac meeting between Bill Clinton and then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch caused significant controversy.

In contrast, the current administration has openly called for prosecuting perceived enemies and forced out prosecutors who stood in the way. The Supreme Court's immunity decision has seemingly enabled this approach by legitimizing the idea that a president can do "pretty much anything he wants."

The court's rationale was to avoid "enfeebling" presidents in an endless "cycle of factional strife." However, the article argues that this approach has instead created a dangerous precedent that could allow future presidents to weaponize the justice system for political purposes.

And watching that happen under Trump — who is now prosecuting his former head of the FBI James Comey and New York's Attorney General Letitia James, who successfully had him convicted of fraud — may persuade the Supreme Court to back off its ruling, Weissmann and McCord wrote.

The authors suggest it is not too late for the court to mitigate the damage. If the Comey or James cases reach the Supreme Court, the justices could acknowledge the "hollowness of their reasoning" and recognize that while they correctly identified the problem of factional strife, their remedy was fundamentally flawed, the lawyers concluded.