You say he reached out to you and asked if you liked Python. He probably wanted to roll out Python and was looking for someone who wanted to do it. If he told someone to do something they weren't passionate about, they would fail. He wanted to make sure it succeeded, so he reached out to you.

If he's such a bigshot and everyone was frightened of him, he must not have been afraid of them. When he said, "you wouldn't get fired," he probably meant what he said. He was giving you air cover. And it worked. When the gnomes came out after you, you just sent them to him. And they didn't bother you again.

I can imagine how the conversation went:

"Armen, did you tell Sean to install Python"

"No, did he"?

"Yes he did!"

"Great!!"

Now the gnomes are on their backfoot and have to defend why Sean shouldn't install Python If this guy Armen told you to do it, Armen has to defend himself to them.