You can hardly say that they switched to a private channel because they knew "that they would get blasted for such a response in a public forum" when the comment they were responding to was the one that suggested the switch to email.
The comment suggested email for payment, not an extortion accusation (i know accusation is bit too much of a strong word, i couldnt find anything better)
Plus, they did get blasted just because the email was made public. To me, that shows that they wanted a more private channel.
