In this case he left negative trust... for pointing out he abuses the trust...
The staff here protect him for some reason, because the rules seem to mater for everyone else - except Vod
Every time he breaks the rules some brown noser says something like "he learned his lesson" or "give him another chance" even though he has done this over and over and over again, demonstrating his complete disregard for the rules he so willfully runs around destroying other people's work and reputations over.
THE RULES ARE IMPORTANT (unless of course it is me then they don't apply at all)! -Forum staff mantra
You mean Tomatocage seems to protect him for some reason. Tomatocage is the only one who can remove Vod, unless Theymos removes Tomatocage from depth 1. With that minor exception that is pretty unlikely to happen, unless Tomatocage messes up majorly. Staff aren't involved, they don't even make up the majority of the default trust list. We can't send a pm saying, "Hey buddy, remove/keep Vod or else" regardless of whether each individual staff member agrees that Vod is default trustworthy.
A lot of your points have to do with Staff interference in the trust system, Staff have no say on the default trust system unless its their own branch. For example last night when I saw the BayAreaCoins thread, I watched it, and was waiting to see how he responded. I agreed that it was abuse, and if he could not see what was wrong with the negative feedback that he had left, I would have removed him from my list as well. Badbear, dserrano5, Hostfat, or myself cannot tell anyone else how to moderate their trust list, no one on the default trust list can. Hypothetically speaking Theymos could, but Canaryinthemine is the only case of anyone from depth level 1 being removed, and that was because Canary was not attentive enough to their trust list.
Vod is still on the default trust list under Tomatocage because Tomatocage believes that Vod is more of an asset than a liability.