It may be helpful to compare Nixon and Trump for the nexus between their crimes and the policy evil they espoused, and the comparison may have long term implications. (For non-lawyers, “nexus” is a word meaning something like connection and overlap.)
For Trump, while the full scope of crimes and evil is barely beginning to be known, we do know that they overlap heavily, from Russia to environmental influence peddling. For these and many others, the connections are really strong.
Nixon on the other hand, did much more harm than we remember, but the crimes, while widespread, were focused on abuse of the national security system to cover up his election committee’s crimes. Now the “plumbers” were set up to prevent leaks about Vietnam, but the ultimate link is tenuous.
Now, the close intertwining of Trump’s evil policy and surely criminal acts will make it harder to get rid of him, because the policy allies will hang on regardless of the criminal revelations.
But, glorious but, once Trump is out, the overall impact on national policy will be much greater, because the evil policy will be de-legitimized by its connection to the crimes, and the advocates for those policies will be further de-legitimized from the failue to understand or rather admit those connections.
