Yes it is disingenuous for Dean to pretend that this was a normal process applied to a normal situation. Clearly whatever happened on that team, this latest round was not the beginning or even most important part. Gebru's letter mentions her threatening to sue Google previously, for instance. [1] The discussion about rigour in a conference paper or internal review is obviously a pretense.

[1] https://www.platformer.news/p/the-withering-email-that-got-a...