I’m with you on this, it seems he reached out, then just addressed the points raised in the blog? It feels like doing it this way is better than writing a shit-post blog rebuttal? The blogger then reposted their emails as well without asking permission, which, depending on jurisdiction might be questionable.
I feel this whole post/scenario has been elevated to nothing from nothing.
It’s fairly important to keep it private for US citizens, see here.