But the obvious explanation (and the one Occam's Razor points us to) is quite different: That Uber would fire Lewandowsky if they thought they could benefit, but they believe standing behind him will minimize their legal liability and/or maximise their chances of benefitting from the purchase of Otto. A normal guy accused of something baseless doesn't have any pull on Uber and their top exec's; Lewandowsky might.

In other words, your conclusion is that "if they're standing behind this guy when everything is pushing them to fire him, they'd NEVER fire a normal guy!" A better conclusion is probably "if they're standing behind this guy when everything is pushing them to fire him, there must be something really strong forcing them not to. A normal guy would still be screwed, because they don't have...whatever Lewandowsky has."

I mean, obviously we don't know what Uber's top execs are thinking, or what really happened with Lewandowsky and Otto. But we know a bit about how Uber think in general, and we've seen some past decisions they've made. Do you really argue selfless altruism and employee loyalty is the most likely explanation here?