To be clear, I'm not defending what they did. Only explaining why I think they thought they could get away with it. They were already accustomed to operating

To be clear, I'm not defending what they did. Only explaining why I think they thought they could get away with it. They were already accustomed to operating in a transgression gray-zone (and generally getting away with it), and when covid hit and the zeitgeist became "do something!", they felt they had extra license to push boundaries even further.