What you said about Shugden issue being a scapegoat makes perfect sense. It was soon after Tenzin Peljor's ordination in 2006 by the Dalai Lama that he became active in countering the protests or Dorje Shugden people. His approach followed the same style or modus operandi as the Central Tibetan Administration, finding methods to undermine the credibility of the other party by attacking the people/group and not the subject matter. If he was genuinely concerned about the Shugden issue, he could have started his 'cause' earlier.
For the sake of others who do not know the history, Tenzin Peljor joined the NKT in 1995/96 according to his biography,
becoming ordained in 1998 and later disrobing and leaving the group in 2000. Tenzin Peljor and his NKT teacher decided to leave NKT at the same time, after which Tenzin continued to be her student
He took ordination again in 2002 in Nepal, but disrobed after only 2 months and began studying with a new teacher from the Rime tradition. In March 2006,
after 4 years in Rime he then took ordination from the Dalai Lama in India, who gave him the name Tenzin Peljor.
Such a track record of taking on robes and then disrobing, joining and then leaving one group or tradition to the other makes people wonder whether Tenzin Peljor is indeed serious about his Dharma practice. I don't believe that it is a coincidence that Tenzin Peljor became active in countering the protests or Dorje Shugden people soon after his ordination in 2006 by the Dalai Lama. I think his ordination could be part of the deal for his appointment/job in CTA, something to make Tenzin's job easier, some sort of 'credibility' as he had none.Also, following his ordination by the Dalai Lama, Tenzin Peljor remained in India and began to assist the CTA with their disinformation smear campaign, starting with editing pages on Wikipedia, he became the main editor for the page about the NKT.
Later on, when Tenzin's campaign to discredit the NKT on Wikipedia started to lose ground, he then switched towards online Buddhist chat groups, in particular he became very active on a group called e-Sangha. It was on this group that he struck up a friendship with David Cutshaw, a disillusioned ex-NKT member and encouraged him to start a new discussion group.
The 'survivor' group was created on May 22nd 2007 and Tenzin was the first person other than David to post on it. He assisted with moderating the group, approving new members, editing its settings and more. It was set up to focus only on the negative aspects of the NKT, and any pro-NKT messages were to be strictly forbidden. The idea was that the group would encourage people to leave the NKT and only post their negative experiences and opinions of them.
With this background of work experience or career history, it's not difficult to believe that he would engage in dirty work with other 'survivors' such as McQuire et al.