Is Cloudflare here acting in an inappropriate manner? If the poster had instead been hosted by any regular host in the US, Dreamhost, AWS, Squarespace?

Would they most likely do the same?

Is Cloudflare in this instance acting a midle layer between the actual hosting entity and the Internet? Or is Cloudflare the hosting company as well?

I do know that Cloudflare have at times done more for some of their users I would not expet them to fight a court order evertime they recieve one.