This doesn't excuse Fleischman and Pons but is useful for separating the BYU and Utah efforts.

Utah was working on a different process than Jones at BYU. However, when they applied for DOE funding, their work was sent to Jones for review, who then got in touch with them.

Both were working on (what was then called) cold fusion, but very different mechanisms. And they agreed to submit their papers (and therefore publicize their work) on the same day, not because they had worked together or because they had the same results, but because they were in a similar field and had similar breakthroughs.

Absolutely Utah jumped ahead, abiding by the letter of the agreement to submit papers on the same day but completely contradicting the spirit of the agreement by having a large press conference the day before. That's bad on them.

But muon-catalyzed fusion (what Jones' work has since been rebranded as after all the negative publicity with Fleischman/Pons' 'cold fusion') is still an ongoing field of research. Jones has gone off the rocker in other ways, but I don't think it's fair to associate him with Utah's failed and unverified cold fusion research