Ask yourself: why didn't they just freeze trading these securities instead of forcing liquidations across retail brokerages and putting everyone in sell only mode?

They're covering for the market makers and shorts who are on the hook for all the options bought and shares shorted.

Institutions could enough to ameliorate their pain while the only option given to everyone else was sell.

They should have instead stopped trading so everyone could borrow whatever they needed to pay for the bets they lost.