Since then, journalists have talked to both sides on and off the record and confirmed that the only reason for firing was distrust for Altman's honesty.

Altman's history seems to match. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/11/22/sam-alt...

>Four years ago, one of Altman’s mentors, Y Combinator founder Paul Graham, flew from the United Kingdom to San Francisco to give his protégé the boot, according to three people familiar with the incident, which has not been previously reported. .... he flew across the Atlantic with concerns that the company’s president put his own interests ahead of the organization — worries that would be echoed by OpenAI’s board.

>A separate concern, unrelated to his initial firing, was that Altman personally invested in start-ups he discovered through the incubator using a fund he created with his brother Jack — a kind of double-dipping for personal enrichment that was practiced by other founders and later limited by the organization.

“It was the school of loose management that is all about prioritizing what’s in it for me,”

But considering the board initially fired him for being dishonest/lying in an ongoing fashion, and the board wouldn't do the firing without evidence they could back it up with, it's not so hard to extrapolate that a return would be conditional on a deeper investigation and "full" cooperation.

It sounds a lot like background briefing to me...