Not to both criteria. The only people who should have had access to the unredacted report (prior to the leak) should have been the police, Nick and his co-defendants, and their lawyers, who at the time, was Nick.
Nick's an asshole and wanted his accusers harassed by the Still_life's in his fandom.
I don't see how you conclude that. I'm not saying Nick definitely wasn't the person, I'm just saying you don't know that Nick was the only one of the people with access who knew who Melton is. That is a guess.
Here's the timeline of the first leak from Melton the day after Rekieta's arrest:
- The first Twitter post from Melton containing an excerpt of the documents seems to have been posted May 24, 2024 at 7:53 PM UTC or 2:53 PM Minnesota time, hours after Nick's first appearance while in jail.
- The order to release Rekieta from jail was only signed almost exactly an hour earlier prior to this post at 1:52 PM Minnesota time.
- According to a post at 3:19 PM Minnesota time, 26 minutes after Melton's first tweet containing leaked documents, Rekieta was still listed as being on the in-custody roster at that time, but it's possible the roster was out of date.
- Nick was released by 3:49 PM Minnesota time at the latest, as the roster update showed him as being released as of this time.
The document appears to be a photograph of a page from one of the police reports and
is easily verified as not being from the warrant which Rekieta was provided and infamously threw on the ground. I have no idea whether Nick would been provided a physical copy of the police reports while he was in jail within a day of the incident, even if he was self-representing. I suppose it's possible.
For Nick to be the leaker, all of the following would need to happen within 1 hour: a) the order to release Nick being signed, b) Nick being processed and released in accordance with the order, c) Nick almost immediately after being released taking his phone and taking a photo of the document to send to Melton, and d) Melton taking the picture sent to him to post to Twitter.
I think the important thing to note which was missed by not looking at the timeline closely is that this would also imply that Rekieta was in contact with Melton before even getting arrested, because otherwise why would communicating with Patrick Melton be literally the first thing he thinks of doing after getting access to his phone?
From what I understand of Rekieta's motives before the arrest, his main goal seems to have been to convince Aaron to sign an NDA preventing him from talking about the polycule so as to cover up its existence, which begs the question of why he would be in contact with Aaron's main detractor who would have had a massive financial interest in exposing the polycule.
If you really believe Nick is the leaker, I'd go through Melton's shows from before Nick's arrest because there's probably things he's saying that he's being fed by Nick.
I just know, from years of observation, that his usual M.O. is to call the person acting in opposition to him a "dummy" and to declare that they're not gonna win. By his very nature, he is an arrogant jackass.
Oftentimes this is followed by him having to eat shit.
Even people that have only followed him for just the last two years should have picked up on that by now.
He's not doing it this time, and it's REALLY obvious to me.
Hell, maybe he's finally starting to realize he's not as smart as he thinks he is. Wouldn't that be a trip?
Maybe he has learned that the "Rekieta Curse" is a thing and that by not predicting that the footage will never be released, he won't activate the curse in which his legal takes are almost always wrong.