Jury selection for the Ex-Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes’ federal fraud trial is set to begin today in the U.S. District Court in San Jose, Calif.
Holmes is facing 10 counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud over allegations that she knowingly misled investors by claiming the Theranos technology could revolutionize blood testing. She has pleaded not guilty to all charges. The trial was originally slated to begin on October 27 last year but had been delayed multiple times because of the COVID-19 pandemic and then Holmes’ pregnancy announcement in March.
The prosecution and defense have haggled with Judge Edward Davila over evidence to include in the months leading up to the trial. Prosecutors, for example, want to present evidence about how Holmes’ desire for recognition and wealth allegedly motivated her to lie about the capabilities of Theranos’ technology to detect disease through one drop of blood. Both sides have traded blame over the loss of a company database that would have shown the level of inaccurate blood-testing results.
In the months leading up to the trial, Holmes’ lawyers wanted to present a number of claims for the trial. The defense was claiming a “mental disease” defense in September last year and wanted to present evidence about Silicon Valley startup culture in May this year. Court filings that were unsealed on August 28 suggest that her defense attorneys plan to defend her actions by accusing former Theranos COO and Holmes’ former romantic partner Sunny Balwani of emotional and psychological abuse, Reuters reports. Balwani has denied the allegations.
The prosecution in the case has filed a proposed witness list of nearly 280 people, CNN reports. Throughout the Theranos rise, Holmes managed to amass a number of high-profile investors, including Rupert Murdoch, Walmart founders the Walton family, former U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and her family and many more. She had a retail partnership with Walgreens and Safeway and had a powerful board of directors with members such as former U.S. Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz and four-star general James Mattis, who later went on to become the U.S. Defense Secretary under President Donald Trump.
Holmes and Theranos were once the next big thing in Silicon Valley, with Holmes claiming that her company would revolutionize blood testing with technology that could analyze tiny amounts of blood. Forbes in 2015 even recognized Holmes as America’s richest self-made woman based on Theranos’ multibillion-dollar valuation at the time.
Investigative reporting, though, soon dismantled the claims Holmes was making about Theranos’ technology, raising questions about whether she and others had misled investors. The downward spiral culminated in the 2018 shutdown of the company, with the SEC criminally charging Holmes and former Theranos president Balwani over what it described as a “massive fraud.”
Balwani’s trial is expected to follow the Holmes trial.