Bad look for the Reyna's. The excuses about "just venting" look like BS to me. They were at least trying to embarrass Berhalter. The sad thing is, I think this may make it harder to get rid of Berhalter. It will look like they allowed the Reynas to get him fired when his overall performance should have done that on its own (in my opinion).
Gio must be (or should be) mortified. He isn't much older than my kids. My son and daughter would never let me get involved in their playing time and they aren't international stars. They certainly wouldn't want me going to their ADs to bring up something that had nothing to do with coaching. He's making over $2mm per year. Doesn't he have an agent or PR team to act as the family proxy with less emotion? No matter what happens, I'd think his teammates aren't happy about any of this (or they find it humorous).
I don't know. It could be that they had a strategic plan... and that they were very bad on strategy.
I think her explanation is a lot more plausible.
They are all in tight with USSF. When Berhalter shamed Gio in public, I think her complaint to Stewart sounded like this: "Even after Gio asked for forgiveness and received it, it wasn't enough. Greg had to extract a pound of flesh. But when he was the same age and did something much worse [kicked his future wife], he received forgiveness."
I can see someone making a complaint like that to Stewart, who is Claudio's friend. Say whatever about the logic of such an argument, I just find it plausible that she made it in that context.
I don't know if Stewart immediately realized that she had said something that he HAD to push up the chain of command. Typically, when that happens, someone like Stewart would tell her right there and then that this was something he had to relay. She could then think about what she had just said.
It very well could have occurred to him after the fact (I know, I've been in these situations, and you don't always think of the possible implications immediately). But he still had to do it.