"....smart money players who held the PPS down through manipulative measures like short selling...."

The increase in short selling lasted only 6 weeks, from end of Feb to mid April. I would call the short selling a rational response to an overshoot in the stock price. If it wasn't there's no reason the stock price couldn't have continued up. After all, it moved back up more than $1 (from April 17th) to $3.00 on April 27th AS the short interest was declining.

Since mid April, there has been a steady decrease in the shares short as you noted. If you want to blame increasing short interest for hold the stock price down in the spring, you have to give the declining short interest credit for boosting the stock for the last 6.5 months.

PS. You do realize you called the folks shorting the "smart money", right?