There were troubling things about Nick as far back as 2018. He was making mistakes about the law and misrepresenting his legal experience for example. There was also Nick promoting Drex. But there was nothing funny about it and nothing cow-worthy. It was mostly boring stuff. When the whole thing around Vic started, political opinions had become such that you couldn't go after Nick without being considered an SJW and part of the enemy. Nick got by for a long time for the same reasons many bad people associated with Gamergate did. Because supporting him became about the political cause he was associated with rather than what he was doing.
Any site that works by consensus is going to tend to get things wrong for a while due to popular opinion going one way or the other. Its possible to go against the consensus, but you have to make the case and move on rather than bitching about it day after day. You have to play a long game sometimes. But if they are really a cow, they will eventually do something to show it. They can't help themselves.