Not related to chess, and at most tangentially to the drama, but it's funny, so. Article in Cyclingtips:
CHESS OUTCAST HANS NIEMANN SAYS HE WAS A TOP CYCLIST. WAS HE REALLY?
Apparently Niemann has been telling a story about how he was a top cyclist as a kid. He did cycling while living in the Netherlands as a kid, continued for a bit after moving back to the US, and last year he told Chess Life magazine that he was rated third nationally in his age group. Cyclingtips has looked into this claim. There's not much to go on, because not a lot of records are kept for little kids and most of them don't race for results no matter their talent.
He competed in the Dutch 2012 national championships, coming 25th out of 35, one minute behind the winner in a 12:30 race. Back in the US in 2013, he did the Northern California Nevada Cycling Association district track championships, finishing last out of five riders in all six races. He did 24 races in total; zero wins and 8 podium finishes. In those 8 races, only two of them had more than three riders. It's hard to see how he could have possible be ranked third.
The weird thing is, this is when he was 9-10 years old, and it's not like he was directly bad. Why lie about this? It's a fun enough story on its own. To be fair, there is a possibility that there simply weren't other 10 year olds racing for results at the time, which would make it not a lie but still a very weird thing to say.