He might have maybe still been persecuted but the feds and everyone involved would have taken their sweet time investigating potentially a few more years since he’s still an ex president. Officially convicting him makes the office look bad and could potentially turn ugly with the MAGA supporters. Nobody wants jan6 2.0 and they very well might have been happy to let him fade into obscurity if that was deemed the best strategy to avoid civil unrest as a whole. Him putting himself in the spotlight again lit a fire under everyones ass and accelerated things drastically.