The first three are mostly unknowable, for now. Trying to do useful research in this arena has become fairly daunting, the signal to noise ratio is lower than ever. I gave up, I had other research to do. 4. They probably only started destroying evidence right around the time Trump (or someone he takes advice from, if such a person exists) gauged that not everyone in the world was writing off his early campaign days as an utter failure. Trump's problem is that it takes more than a year or two's worth of furious evidence erasure to whitewash a billionaire-level family empire's paper trail. He's in some shit, dude, even though he's bought leagues of people to assist with the effort, I'm sure. We'll probably hear from them after the gag orders get lifted. Yeah, they'll start by looking into Russia, but god knows what else they'll find.
In general the signal to noise ratio is unbelievable. I've been reading up a bit on positive psychology and even the various meta analysis performed don't agree with each other and it's just...what have we done to ourselves where we've obscured communication and underlying data to the point where people who aren't total laypeople can't even figure out what's going on...
Like any other long-running conflict between two groups (in this case, the elite and everyone else), the problem is one of each side trying to get an edge on the other. The Internet and mass communication as a whole is just another tool. Leaders have known for a long time how dangerous the press can be, but haven't really been able to get the upper hand until now as the tools have gotten more sophisticated (which comes in part to being able to tap into human nature, whereby we're wired to want an echo chamber).
This feels like wishful thinking to me. Either political party would rather a corrupt sociopath stay in power than torpedo their own political standing, so I don't really believe that the Republicans will do anything meaningful to Trump. At least not until it becomes costlier politically to stand with him, and I don't foresee that happening, well, ever.He's in some shit, dude, even though he's bought leagues of people to assist with the effort, I'm sure.