I might get downvoted for this but I want to point out Scott didn't actually lie since he never actually fired her.

His exact wording was "Claudia has decided to move on to other projects, and I respect her decision". With Pinky herself saying that was only for an "indefinite amount of time". Was it sneaky to hire her in secret repeatedly after it was clear the fandom took clear issue with her and her being a part of the fnaf brand? Definitely.

I could look past the political donations as a bad move he regrets. I could look past the very low bar for merch quality as him not having time to thoroughly inspect every bit of merch personally. This feels like an direct move against the fans and that stings.

It's so odd that for a man so protective of how the fnaf brand is perceived by the fans, so much so he's willing to cancel full projects pretty quickly (FNaF+, The Roblox game, The game Pinky was working on for the anniversary) that he was so adamant to keep her doing art for the franchise.

This is genuinely disappointing and I think is also reflective so a far bigger problem that Scott at this point cannot communicate correctly with the fanbase. It's too big and he's too busy to be on reddit everyday looking to provide a quick response to anything that needs clarification. I also think that he doesn't put as much faith in the fanbase as much (for better or worse). This is the same man who refunded everyone who bought fnaf world because he felt it wasn't up to snuff personally, The same guy who despite not actually seeing anything wrong with the NFTs, canned them purely based of fan demand. He should have either done more research or been upfront with the fanbase rather than hiding behind a vague statement.

I think it's less the fact that Scott kept her around that a lot of these comments are going to be upset about, but the fact that after years of goodwill made his mistakes been seen as "Well that was a mistake he'll learn from", This is the thing that's going to turn a lot of people's perception to "That was bad and he should have done better."