I think your underestimating the slowdown that will happen if we have to involve the client's legal team in addition to the accounts payable team.
If you had reason to believe that the client was really, truly, about to pay you, then you wouldn't have written the blog post.
If you get legal involved, the speed at which you move towards getting paid may change to become nonzero. At some point the speed of the client's legal team is irrelevant, because a sufficiently slow legal response by the client translates to a court judgement against them.
This is likely incompetence, not malice