This was brought up in discussions at the time as being a potential smear campaign against him. I personally didn't really buy this as being the most plausible explanation -- though I will say that the US government has definitely done things like this before (the FBI tried to manipulate MLK into committing suicide by threatening him with "evidence" of sexual misconduct[1]). And if I was a spook, it's probably the first course of action I would take to discredit someone.
Personally though, I think the more obvious issue in the Appelbaum case is that he was held to "trial by social media", which is a very common pattern these days. In the end, there was no legal action taken by ether Appelbaum or the women accusing him (and the veracity of some -- though not all -- of the stories was challenged by other women in the Tor community). He's now back to doing crypto-related research as a student of Bernstein and Lange (recently publishing a paper about improving WireGuard's security).
So I don't think we'll ever know if the allegations were true or not, but it probably means he won't work as a journalist (or for the Tor Project) again.
Personally though, I think the more obvious issue in the Appelbaum case is that he was held to "trial by social media", which is a very common pattern these days. In the end, there was no legal action taken by ether Appelbaum or the women accusing him (and the veracity of some -- though not all -- of the stories was challenged by other women in the Tor community). He's now back to doing crypto-related research as a student of Bernstein and Lange (recently publishing a paper about improving WireGuard's security).
So I don't think we'll ever know if the allegations were true or not, but it probably means he won't work as a journalist (or for the Tor Project) again.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_suicide_lette...