Matt Mullenweg names a new Automattic board weeks after directors tried to place him on leave

Sources: primary, discussion
Summary: TechCrunch reports, with Mullenweg confirming after publication, that the previous board voted to place him on leave and that he retook control 33 hours and 20 minutes later using the 84 percent of the vote he controls, removing or accepting resignations from the directors involved and letting go of both the CFO slated to become interim CEO and the chief legal officer. The new board is four people, two of them co-founders of IRL, an app that shut down after investigations found nearly all its users were bots. Mullenweg also replaced litigation counsel with Susman Godfrey, which TechCrunch notes raises the question of a link to the continuing WP Engine litigation, and the board never stated publicly why it tried to remove him.
Why it matters: Automattic is the parent of WordPress.com, Tumblr and WooCommerce, so its governance sits upstream of a large amount of deployed software.
Follow-up: Track any public statement from the removed directors on the reason for the leave vote, and whether the counsel change is tied to the WP Engine litigation.