That implication being that Dan doesn't have the status required to state facts that make Vladmir's group look bad.

"My group" here must be people with bad memory for things that don't interest them. Objection is not to "stating a fact", but to the way it's stated: it's in the "arguments as soldiers" class, missing the context and as a result giving connotations not following from the stated fact ("dark arts" feel). This discipline applies no matter what object-level connotation is created (of course emotions make some violations more salient to my mind than others).