I don't think the recording shows that Ned didn't tell Justin about the prior promises for the stake, and actually I think if you read between the lines it more likely confirms that Justin DID know of this. A non disclosure agreement between Ned and Justin RE the sale was mentioned in the recording - by the nature of a NDA of course we don't know what was covered, but it would be much harder to believe that Justin had no idea of prior commitments to the stake, than it would be to believe that he did know about it, didn't consider prior commitments by stinc to be legally binding to him after he purchased the stake, and that he is pretending ignorance while communicating with witnesses to buy time while he continues to try to gain more Steem to stake, push through a hardfork with short power down time, and allow the exchanges who helped him to get their steem liquid again... because that is exactly what his actions have been. Don't listen to the words, watch the hand holding the knife.

EDIT - and actually, you can just listen to the words as well - how many times in that talk with the witnesses did he say variants of "the past history between you and Ned is between you and Ned, and has nothing to do with me". That doesn't read to me like he was unaware of the past history, it reads to me like he doesn't think it has anything to do with him and his purchase of the stake. It is debatable if the multiple promises on the chain RE the intended use of the Steem stake amounted to a legal obligation that would transfer to a new owner of the company, particularly when those promises were worded in such a way as to keep it open e.g. in the Steem road map which many people point to there is wording that the uses listed are not an exclusive list. Not to mention, the programmatic powerdown and sell off that Stinc was doing the entire time was NOT used for development and was instead used to send $ dividends to Stinc shareholders, so precedent was already in place for exactly what Justin stated he planned to do with the stake - sell it and profit from it.