I just read the whole thread. Heavy stuff.
Ultimately we're talking about a constitutional crisis. There's several layers of violations, between established nat sec law, historical precedent, "what people will actually think of this". I don't feel particularly clarified.
I know this will sound super obstinate, but if legal claims boil down to "Trump, as candidate, talked to Russia", and "existence of backchannels are a legal no-no", it's hard for me to see the Trump base (and his supposed business leader death-cult) as giving any sorts of fucks.
A lot of my questions boil down to: What *actually* happened during Watergate? Every crisis of this scale is definitionally uncharted territory. Where do actual chips fall? Clarification and certainty are scarce resources.
At this point, the opinions of people like you and me and even the Trump base are irrelevant. It's a job for lawyers and courts now. We get back in the game after the legal chapters are done and we're shooting the breeze about the brewing civil war.