Very good points, especially on siloing the admin from the mods. Like you said, the mods had been doing a great job performing damage control from the last few rounds of drama.
I've said this before, but I don't envy an admin for a social media site. I certainly wouldn't want to do it. So I get he was stressed, and had been getting a lot of backlash, but again he could have stepped back and let his team handle it.