FWIW I've worked in places where this would be standard to communicate over email, particularly if it's not that big of a deal (as in, we have plenty of other projects).

We don't really know the details of how the rejection even took place--maybe he asked for it that project, maybe he was on it and performed poorly, etc.

Yes, we are in a separate timezone, and some of their developers are too.

This was remote work.