Both of those were very bad, but nothing compared to the raw corruption in Trump's pardons.
I certainly don't see how the pardon of Changpeng Zhao is worse than the pardon of President Richard Nixon or Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger. Crimes committed in office by the highest officials in the US government are a whole different level than crimes committed by some corporate CEO.
Trump's pardons include hundreds of literal insurrectionists, promises to pardon in exchange for not testifying against him (witness tampering), and other blatant corruption. He fired the head of the OPA and installed a political hack to speedrun awful pardon choices and made a mockery of the process in a far more corrupt and damaging manner than anyone before him, and it's not even close.
I'm more concerned with the effects of the pardons on the country and on democracy than I am with judging the rectitude of the pardoner. Allowing the President to escape the law set a terrible precedent with obvious repercussions into the present.
I'm not trying to defend Trump. My point is that the stage was set for Trump. Abuses of executive power, of which I've given two egregious examples—Watergate and Iran-Contra—have been swept under the rug for far too long. To always "put the scandal behind and focus on the future" is to encourage future misbehavior. I would note that in stark contrast, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has just gone to prison.
Granting pardons is not by itself a crime. Should pardons be eliminated or strictly limited? Sure. But pardons are not really the main issue with the Trump administration. Rather, the main issue is general lawlessness and abuse of power. When I mentioned setting the stage, I didn't mean setting the stage for granting pardons specifically but rather setting the stage for abusing executive power generally.
This is a strange take on my comments. To be absolutely clear: I object in the strongest possible terms to the crimes of the Nixon and Reagan administrations and to the subsequent pardons of Nixon and Reagan administration officials. I have no desire to legitimize those pardons, and indeed I think the pardon power should have been eliminated or at least strictly limited a long time ago. Moreover, I objected to your attempt to minimize those past scandals, which you described as "nothing".
Thus, my comments are in no way a defense or legimitimization of Trump. They become a defense of Trump only in your own mind when you insist on discounting the past, which I do not. And when I suggested that previous pardons set the stage for Trump, I meant that shielding the executive branch from the legal consequences of their crimes only emboldens someone like Trump to act without any fear of legal consequences for his own crimes in office. The terrible precedents set in the past have come back to haunt us in the present. Again, that's not "legitimization" in any sense.