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It's interesting to think about how quickly it becomes hard to verify or disprove things.
The evidence appears to be on the side of "no, he did not" but in a generation or two, if there's a published book claiming he did and just some articles and ephemera of a small group of scholars that don't believe it... it's doubtful that the contradictory evidence will be as easy to find in archives as the book itself.
Makes me wonder about internet preservation attempts. In this case, the "he didn't" evidence seems to be less available to any future researchers than the "he did" claim in the published book. But is that the general trend, or will generally preserving online discussions dis-proportionally preserve erroneous, non-verified information compared to preserving published books? I'm generally in the camp of "let the internet be forgotten, like how most conversations have always been forgotten" but this is a curious counter-case. Perhaps if all the people he claimed to talk with had more online footprints, it would be easier to disprove the claims. Or perhaps it would in the future enable someone to make an even more convincing fraud - GPT to generate fake conversations in their actual voice; publicy-available date- and geo-stamped information about travels, all details that could be used to slide yourself into their story.