Oh, there’s always a deal, at least for him. The rules do not apply evenly to start with, and even though he’s not that rich, he’s still part of the aristocracy.
Even though he broke all sorts of laws that contain the words “betrayed your nation to foreign adversaries”, started a sloppy coup last time he lost an election, and basically bragged about it in between perjuring himself, the best solution for everyone is for him to quietly fade into irrelevance.
It’s always better not to make a martyr if you can help it, it just isn’t worth it
Plus, the cruelest punishment I can think of is letting him use up the last couple years of his charismatic energy out of the public eye, so when he inevitably comes back he’d reveal himself to be the rambling dementia patient he’s been for a while.
And I don’t mean that as an insult - read his speeches. His delivery is amazing. Take that away and just read them (especially from the most recent ones), and even if you realized he was spewing word salad it’s still shocking
To your point, they published a method that could be replicated in less than a week in basically any college or lab in the country.
Fraud makes little sense here - this screams exuberance to me