Gary, thank you for the great advice. I'll perform that test and post a photo. It is clear to the naked eye that both the barrel is pointing left and the scope holes are lining up to the right, but it will be good to confirm with the test you described.
After the test, I'll drop the rifle off with the instructor at CSOT to get another opinion from him. It is unlikely that I'll perform so many repairs on this rifle, and will most likely crush & scrap it or sell it to someone who really-really wants to fix a lemon. Re-drilling the receiver for scope mounts, re-drilling it for for the barrel mount, buying a new barrel to replace this almost-new barrel, then always having to use custom-threaded barrels is not my idea of building up a custom long distance rig one step at at time.
After this, I'll probably just go with a known high quality 700-clone manufacturer like Defiance and still be able to take advantage of the huge aftermarket of Remington compatible accessories.
The part that baffles me the most is not that Remington made a lemon - these things happen and I'm certainly not upset at them for it. What steams me is that Remington factory rep categorically denied that ANY problem exists with this rifle. They had it twice, they did not see something so obvious and they even gouged the muzzle in the process.
Remington's robotic response of "we did not observe that - we did not observe that - we did not observe that - we did not observe that" is a an obvious and effective way to simply get me to go away and never return to Remington for products or service. Well, it worked.