Who's the COO talking on behalf of when he says "we have had multiple conversations with the board"?
Who's full support does Mira (Ilya's choice) have? Why does it need saying?
The rapid escalation from "we seem to disagree on this" to "walk them off the premises" was standard practice at OpenAI, along with firing people on Friday, at noon.
Many people were "resigned" while they were actively discussing (or at least so they thought) any disagreements with their immediate management, or the higher echelons of OpenAI.
Coordinating this internally took more than a few days, and there must have been a few middle-managers involved in several meetings to coordinate this.
Details on Ilya's selection function on who to read in to this would inform a lot of his most intrinsic motivations for this.
It's a pity to see brilliant minds unravel under the pressure of their own invention . . . and so publicly.