Whether or not what someone does breaks the law often his almost nothing to do with the morality of that action or whether or not that action causes harm.
That section of the article was more about the taint upon money donated from various types of donors than about the donors themselves. The distinction it is drawing is between people who do bad things but do not derive their money from those bad things (such as Epstein) and people that do bad things and those bad things is the source of the money they are donating (Koch). It's not saying that donors of the former type are necessarily less immoral or evil than donors of the latter type--just that taking their money is not benefiting directly from their immorality or evil.
So yes I think they are on a different level especially for a university, a university that accepts money from people that are actively trying to fight science to harm everybody...