Adam D'Angelo had a massive conflict of interest and should have resigned like Elon had done years earlier when Tesla started its own AI efforts.
But OpenAI has a for-profit subsidiary. The more we focus on the business aspect of OpenAI, the more Adam's involvement in Poe looks like a conflict of interest. Perhaps this explains why Adam tried to form an alliance with board members who are inclined to focus more on OpenAI's original nonprofit mission. The more OpenAI positions itself as a nonprofit research group, the less problematic his conflict of interest will seem.
Unless this is exactly the kind of lack of "candor" and "break of communications with Sam" really meant, on the original accusations after the firing.
Either that or Adam wasn't paying attention (?), or told Sam not to, and Sam went ahead and still did it as a big fuck you to Adam.
Given how buggy GPTs are (you can't even set up actions with auth, "internal server error") that seems like a very hurried release. Maybe hurried enough so that the board didn't even see it coming.