I must miss some important context here. What exactly was the purpose of his initial email to OpenAI in the first place?

Telling OpenAI that Anthropic has apparently solved an important problem but most likely that refers to him and he is using OpenAI models (not Anthropic's)?

And he wants to clarify that with OpenAI in advance? And get a pardon for Anthropic's likely but false press statements?

I dont get it.

[edited] needless to say, the behavior of the OpenAI employee is really despicable