It was clear to any truly responsible person that they needed a new design for an aircraft with a fundamentally different mission.
He cut every corner possible in order to avoid having to re-certify. From the fundamental decision not to do a full redesign to the decisions related to the kludgey system to keep it from stalling out and how that was managed down the line.
At least one person from the FAA should also go to prison. They failed in their core mission.
This actually seems very similar to a common tactic that managers of software projects will take. Since they are not being judged on the integrity of the code, they are happy to encourage any kind of hack or corner cutting or technical debt in order to save a buck.
In this case the stakes were higher than an average software project and many people died.