Disagree, for any definition of "collude" that carries any consequence to any living person.

Alright, I'm gonna head this one off in an attempt to follow a more interesting conversation path.

There are people in GG who believe this is sufficiently important. Regardless of whether they're right, this evaluation of claim importance is not relevant to whether the claim is verified or not. We're talking about trust-but-verify here, not about what morals a journalist should hold themselves to.

From GG's perspective, this is important; let's agree to disagree on whether it actually is important, and simply talk about whether it's been verified.

Leaving aside the "morally dubious" part: your argument here is that the claim can't be verified, but GG will proceed to treat it as if it's true anyway. Is that right?

I'm saying that there are claims which have been verified and which are, themselves, important. The specific claim you're asking about cannot be verified; but then again, that specific claim is also not necessary.

I mean, analogy time here: you're hosting a party and someone says they're being harassed by two people there. You don't know if the first happened or not, but you just saw the second one happen. Do you tell them they might be wrong on both counts simply because you can't verify the first, or do you evict the second person immediately?

It might, at some point, have been relevant whether people were colluding on that particular story. This is no longer that point; it's long since history and we had something much more concrete to lean on. That's why nobody really went after that story once GJP was exposed - there's no reason to chase smoke when you're literally staring at a wildfire.