I'm more concerned with who wrote that code, their connections, their liabilities, their employers more than what code they write.

I am all for not trusting core devs automatically. Verify what they do! But you certainly should not trust the Knots people either. They are being very underhanded about this situation. Just the "this is super important and needs to be done now or it is the end of bitcoin" narrative they are running is so scammy. That is what phone scammers do to old people too, trying to stress them in to not paying actual attention to the issues. Take a step back, look at the actual facts, and look at the track record of the people on either side. IMO some bad decisions were made by Core, but Tooooonnnnsss of red flags on the Knots side. But those are my opinions. Form your own!