I'm saying it was either not possible or not politically advantageous. Do you honestly think that if Bill Clinton (both before and after being President) was put under the same scrutiny that DJT has been under, that someone wouldn't have found something he did that could have brought a conviction. If you dig hard enough you can find something to charge just about anyone with.
Indeed, but the reason it didn't happen was because the idea of doing what as done in this case was simply a' bridge too far for our politicians, something so harmful to democratic government and the rule of law that although there were some who wanted Nixon prosecuted, for example, they didn't approach it.
But your contention that such a thing WOULD have happened except that the opponents didn't have the opportunity or the guts strikes me as baseless. There were many opportunities in our history but no one ever before wanted to behave like the so-called banana republics behave and which we Americans have always look upon with disdain.
The real question in my mind is about how it will effect the election in November. No doubt he will get a lot of sympathy from those who see this is weaponizing the judicial system for political purposes. At the same time, there is a lot of independents and republicans who do not like Trump but are/were leaning toward Trump just because of how horrible Biden has been. Does this keep them home in November???
I honestly am not sure, and suspect that it could go either way.
On the one hand, I have the hunch that this narrows the field to Biden and Trump for almost everyone. Prior to yesterday, all those people who leaned towards a third candidate wanted to promote some ideals, but now we have something on which the fate of our form of government can reasonably be thought to hang.
So...it's Trump or the other guy, not a wasted vote for some principled outsider who is known not to be able to win but for whom you might vote just because you favor some legislation, etc or admire that candidate as a person. Too much may be at stake for such ordinary thinking.
Still, we have a long way to go to election day, and all sorts of new ingredients may yet come into the stew.