Checks and balances concern constraints on government power. Whether OpenAI's structure complies with the law is a question of regulation, not checks and balances.
It's not a question of regulation, but a question of enforcing said regulation and a question of enforcing a lawful process which follows a breach of a regulation. Which is exactly a spirit of the phrase "checks and balances". It means that if one branch breaks law, then the other branch enforces a compliance with laws/regulations. Of even inside the same branch, if a temporary elected doofus in charge is breaking the law, then people even lower in hierarchy will enforce normal branch functioning. Which in practice was super easy to break, sabotage and blackmail, so neither checking nor balancing happened, everyone went corrupt or impotent simultaneously.