The board doesn't care. They probably knew about all of this and employees knew about the affair with his direct report as well for years.

It's the outside pressure.

So the interesting question is who and how are they applying that pressure.

Does it just come down to virtue signaling pressure?

The outside pressure is probably the investigations, including the securities lawsuit, that have already started. The coordinated media campaign is the way to tell the board "hey by the way, this guy is going down", we don't know exactly where "down" is yet, but I doubt this whole thing just blows over with an apology email about an affair.

lol you said virtue signaling