This also does not surprise me as a legal matter: when you publish unverified allegations and defend them against a non-public figure, it's relatively likely that you are going to have a pretty ugly uphill battle as that's all but textbook defamation.
If they had been more careful about publication (e.g. here are a list of people with allegations against them, but we cannot verify any of them, this is not a statement of guilt), they would be fine. But instead, they took the allegation = guilty path and went full firebrand, which is one of the few things you can't do under current American 1A jurisprudence without getting in trouble.
This also does not surprise me as a legal matter: when you publish unverified allegations and defend them against a non-public figure, it's relatively likely that you are going to have a pretty ugly uphill battle as that's all but textbook defamation.
If they had been more careful about publication (e.g. here are a list of people with allegations against them, but we cannot verify any of them, this is not a statement of guilt), they would be fine. But instead, they took the allegation = guilty path and went full firebrand, which is one of the few things you can't do under current American 1A jurisprudence without getting in trouble.