I think the whole deal here is that people buying $GME wanted to jack the price up exactly to force the shorts into a margin call, and therefore liquidation.
Alternatively, I think a lot of people believed a chunk of put options were expiring soon which would cause a lot of contracts to be executed (I.e. forced stock buying).
If you want to be a conspiracy theorist, the smart thing for the insiders (those who control the board) to do would be to sell all their shares at this price, then declare bankruptcy. This would be illegal of courses, but there are lots of variations on this theme that make financial sense if you can get away with it.