We don't have concrete proof that Hassan was his partner manager, nor that Hassan was directly protecting him, but I think there are some decent breadcrumbs.
If I'm not mistaken, Hassan pulled a DownFromTheRafters/TheyCallMeDSP, and was asked about knowing Phil
after he appeared in Phil's chat (which is why anyone thought to ask this nobody if he knew Phil). Hassan's response was that he didn't know who Phil was. Bruh. It was a trick question, we already knew half the answer when the question was asked, the ship on not knowing him at all had sailed, so the fact that it was the given response suggests that there is some need to cover that knowledge.
This doesn't prove anything but it's pretty strange.
Which was also reinforced by the ToS question because he also needed to obfuscate what exactly his job entailed even though it was public knowledge. In the Phil-verse, when you get flat denials of things that already can't be denied, that usually means you just asked the right question.
A few other things line up; rumblings of Hassan's removal started long before we got this confirmation, and Phil's attempt to reach out to his partner manager found that his partner manager was gone in the same window of time. People probably leave Twitch every day, but there was an alignment here. Twitch's reluctance to throw another one at Phil when I've heard some talk that they often still provide them to other partners could also be an indicator that it was Hassan, and they're not particularly keen on backing people that Hassan took a notable interest in.
There is also the fact that Phil's main means of contact with his 'partner manager' is via unofficial channels (discord) is a little weird. Maybe that's standard practice for that Twitch Partner Personal Touch, but with how militant Twitch can be, I would think that they would at least prefer that your communication is via methods that they can access if necessary. By the sounds of it, Hassan was keen to not use official channels for a variety of reasons...
In terms of defending Phil, forget the reports not sticking. There are two bigger pieces to keep in mind. When Phil was permabanned for his tax scam/fundraiser wording, the perma dropped faster than any I've heard of on Twitch. It silently rolled back to 72 hours and then he was back in 24. That's not automatic, Phil clearly had some party that talked it down at Twitch. Phil's recent mention of reaching out to his 'guy' for the DMCA bans suggests that it was the same person, probably because he got the last one reduced.
The other incident was the nuking of detractor Twitch channels, like TXT. A lot of the channels banned hadn't even mentioned Phil, and as far as online interactions go... some of them did little more in recent years than criticize him on Twitter. An argument could be made for Tevin's ban, but most had no cause. This suggests that Phil passed a list to an insider and had the channels nuked in the span of 24 hours. Even if they were harassing Phil... all of them at once? That still required a list of names. And even if Tevin's ban expired naturally, if Phil had anyone's ear, I think he would be gone again already.
However, I think Hassan's power is overblown. I don't think he personally banned the detractors or lowered Phil's ban. But I think he had pull. If I was the one who generally handled bans and a partner manager approached me with a list of small streamers that had been 'harassing' a partner, I'm probably going to be inclined to believe that he has already looked into this and there is reasonable cause. If it's reducing a ban, then I would listen to this guy explaining it was a miscommunication and he knows this streamer's history. Why would he do it? Because Phil attracts people like this for some reason - degenerates who will do stupid things because they like to be used by Phil. OiC might as well be Hassan - he's probably given Phil a year's worth of Hassan's salary at this point.
And finally, Phil isn't going to get banned... for a while. He'll have to fuck up in a way that Twitch does not want to mess with, like legal issues over the wording of contributions. Even legit viewer reports will continue to be lost because I really don't think they bother to review them. There probably are so many about Phil that are trolling or amount to nothing, and Phil deletes his VODs... it's not worth the effort. Detractors probably shot themselves in the foot on that avenue. But I think if he
really fucks up again, we'll find that he has lost his armor.