On the contrary, it's a smart and deeply reasonable move. Scott is being quite transparent about the reasons for his choice, and the NYT reporters' and editors' behavior will look far more suspicious than anything he's doing.
He just made things worse for himself by deleting that blog and drawing attention to himself.
Now it's not just the original reporter looking into this story, a whole bunch of journalists have dived in, and are now looking for an even bigger story.
And Scott has no reason to care about "drawing attention to himself" at this point - you can't beat a NYT article (even a sympathetic one!) as far as "attention" goes, and that was already in the cards.