im guessing it’s no more than two years away

“All four of us who fired him came to the conclusion that we just couldn’t believe things that Sam was telling us, and that’s just a completely unworkable place to be in as a board — especially a board that is supposed to be providing independent oversight over the company, not just helping the CEO to raise more money.”

I think I have to disagree here because they talk about loss of trust. Loss of trust is enough when deciding who you want to work associate with. Firing seems steep, but when working with someone feels forever untenable, your options are really you or them exiting. There's not really an in-between option to balance the response for how much the issue crossed the line of trust.

Maybe they shouldn't have lost total trust at Sam's behaviour. But personally I'd lean towards it being a pretty normal response from people existing in the environment itself whom are also feeling the active shift effect Sam was having on the power balance to their detriment.