It seems easy to imagine that the crew was panicked an believed (even erroneously) that extending the landing gear while attempting to land was the correct action.

I find it absurd that anyone would find this proof or even a suggestion that the plane was deliberately crashed.

If the pilot or other member of the crew wanted to crash, an unrecoverable nosedive or stall out seems much easier to concoct than "deploying the gear" at the last second once a nighttime middle of the ocean landing was required.

How long would it take to deploy the gear? 15 seconds? Plenty of time for someone else to rescind the request. How long to intentionally nose dive from 2k feet ensuring death? I'm guessing it would be almost instantaneous.