I walked away from the board shortly after the press were briefed we'd pulled out ...and within about 30 seconds, I'd traced my footsteps back to me being dragged into that thread yesterday, about an hour before the Mendy news dropped.
See this all the time in PR Crisis / news management. Saw Trump do it more than anyone else, ever. So I'm very familiar with the method. 1. Distract the public. Change the topic. 2. Displace the news reports with something else.
Seriously, that's my bet. The whole thing was like walking into your wife talking to your daughter (who has serious reason to believe you've been having an affair), and revealing... you'd bought a puppy home! OMG! WOW! PUPPY? NO WAY! I thought you hated them and said we could never have one! IS SO CUUUUTE!
All evening the whole family is enraptured by it's presence. It falls asleep with your daughter, in her lap. You carefully lift it from her, and carry her to bed. The puppy is returned to it's original owner the next day for a full refund. You tell your family something along the lines of the damned thing bit the baby when they were all asleep.
Hopefully we come up with a better, more healthy response to the situation sometime in the future - because it implies cynicism, cowardice, inadequacy.