Disappearing Emails

Day eight. Thursday. The week that just keeps going.

Court opened with Helen Toner's deposition video and wrapped with live testimony from Musk's nonprofit law expert. In between — Zilis finished on the stand and the Sutskever deposition details landed publicly for the first time.

Musk's core claim is that the Microsoft deal — the one he calls "stealing the charity" — was done without proper consent and against the nonprofit mission.

Shivon Zilis was on OpenAI's board when that deal was approved.

The woman Musk and Brockman nicknamed Proxy Elon. Who Musk asked to stay "close and friendly" after he left. Who lived with him. Who is the mother of four of his children. Voted to approve the transaction he's suing over.

OpenAI's lawyers didn't need to argue that point. They just showed the board records.

And then on Karpathy — Musk testified he wasn't actively luring OpenAI employees to Tesla. After OpenAI's lawyer showed Zilis texts celebrating Musk's offer to Karpathy and his acceptance, Zilis conceded Musk approached Karpathy first. Directly contradicting Musk's own sworn testimony.

Two witnesses. Both with complicated personal relationships with Musk. Both confirming things that contradict what he said on the stand. Somewhere the California AG is taking notes. The trial he filed to pressure the IPO is building the regulatory record that could outlast it.

Worth noting: this is federal court. Sworn testimony. Perjury rules apply. The same documentary record that contradicted testimony this week is preserved in a federal docket. That's not an accusation — it's a fact about how federal proceedings work. The lawyers on both sides are aware of it. The judge certainly is.

Ilya Sutskever is the co-founder who voted to fire Altman in November 2023 and then almost immediately reversed course when hundreds of employees threatened to resign. He's been described throughout this trial as the person whose 2023 memo to the board — the one where the first word of his concerns was "Deception" — started the process that briefly ended Altman's tenure.

His deposition details are now out. And the detail that lands hardest is this:

The memos were sent as disappearing emails. But "various lawyers" have copies of both.

Disappearing emails. That lawyers kept. In a lawsuit about transparency and honesty. From the man whose memo began with the word "Deception."

The rest of the Sutskever deposition is consistent with what Murati said Wednesday. Altman would tell people what they wanted to hear, creating an impression of a leader who was manipulative and chameleon-like in the relentless pursuit of his own agenda. He had been waiting to propose Altman's removal for "at least a year" before it happened.

The Burn It Down post documented who Altman is before any of this was sworn testimony. Murati said "No" on Wednesday. Sutskever's deposition confirms the pattern that led the board to fire him in the first place. Three different people. Three different vantage points. Remarkably consistent picture.

While all of this was happening in Oakland, Reuters broke the story on the SpaceX IPO structure and it spread fast.

The governance framework SpaceX filed with regulators gives Musk 83.8% of voting control while holding only 42.5% of equity. It includes mandatory arbitration — meaning investors waive their right to sue as a condition of buying shares. Stricter rules on shareholder proposals. Texas corporate law as the governing framework.

"It closes the voting door, the courthouse door and the proposal door simultaneously. It's unprecedented in terms of creating a total lack of accountability," said one corporate governance expert.

The only person who can fire Musk is Musk.

Let that sit for a moment. The man currently in a federal courtroom being held accountable by a lawsuit — the accountability mechanism he triggered by filing it — is simultaneously structuring an IPO that makes future accountability structurally impossible.

The man suing over governance failures. Designing a company specifically immune to governance challenges.

And experts warn it sets a precedent for the Anthropic and OpenAI IPOs coming behind it. If SpaceX's structure stands, every founder-led AI company heading to market this year has a template for eliminating shareholder rights before the first trade.

The House of Cards post documented what happens to regular people if this IPO stumbles. The SpaceX filing documents what happens to regular investors if it succeeds on these terms.

Either way, accountability is the thing that doesn't survive.

Court opened Thursday with Toner's deposition video — not live testimony. She was one of three independent board members who voted to fire Altman in November 2023. The firing that lasted four days before hundreds of employee resignation threats forced a reversal.

Thursday's live witness was David Schizer — former dean of Columbia Law School, engaged by Musk's lawyers to give expert testimony on whether OpenAI fulfilled its duties as a nonprofit corporation. A legal expert on charitable organizations explaining to a jury what the fiduciary obligations actually were and whether OpenAI met them.

But what came out of Toner's deposition is the detail that nobody was leading with.

OpenAI came within days of merging with Anthropic during the November 2023 crisis. Toner argued that destroying the company — dissolving it into its main competitor — could be "consistent with the mission."

Let that land. One of the three board members who fired Altman argued that folding OpenAI into Anthropic was a legitimate expression of the nonprofit mission. The company founded to ensure AI benefited humanity could be dissolved into a competitor and that was fine, actually.

The crisis also produced this from Sutskever's deposition: his 52-page memo making the case for removing Altman was built almost entirely on unverified claims from one source — Mira Murati. The same Mira Murati who testified "No" under oath this week when asked if Altman told the truth about safety clearances.

And Sutskever described the board as "rushed" and "inexperienced." His words. About the board he was on. That he had been maneuvering for at least a year to assemble in favorable dynamics before making his move.

The person who planned the firing for a year, built the case from one source, described the board as inexperienced, and then immediately reversed course when employees threatened to quit — is now in the deposition record confirming what Murati said from the stand.

"No." "Chameleon-like." "Consistent pattern of deception." "At least a year."

Altman testifies the week of May 11. By the time he takes the stand the jury will have heard from Murati, Sutskever, Toner, Brockman, and Zilis about who he actually is.

The trial ends May 21. The judge decides.

Read the terms. They're more honest than the marketing.

           #sutskever