Those trades are very perplexing indeed and as you stated none of the theories we all posted makes any sense today in light of the absence of the OI and the trading of the stock.
However, even what you suggested, that the trades somehow involves the shorts, is not easy to support in that the the reduction in the short interest of such magnitude, indeed of any significant size, would have a very positive effect on the stock price.
So for the time being I assume that whatever they did was such that the effect is negative But I don't have a way to explain it.