Former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes leaves after a hearing at a federal court in San Jose, Calif., on July 17, 2019. [Image courtesy of Reuters/Stephen Lam]
Ex-Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes’ federal fraud trial will now start in March 2021 amid delays related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Judge Edward Davila decided yesterday that jury selection will start on March 9, with opening arguments taking place around March 16 in U.S. District Court in San Jose, Calif.
It is possible that some or all of the trial may take place over video, though a lawyer for Holmes has said that it would be hard to make video work for such a large case, according to The Mercury News.
Meanwhile, Holmes through her lawyers has also been raising questions about the grand jury that returned second and third superseding indictments against her, asking whether the pandemic prevented jury selection from a fair cross-section of the community.
Potential government witnesses in next year’s trial could include former U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis and former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who both served on Theranos’ board. Media titan Ruport Murdoch of News Corp. and The Wall Street Journal may testify about Theranos pressuring journalists not to publish negative news about the company.
Holmes and Theranos were once Silicon Valley darlings, with Holmes claiming that her company was set to 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 Sunny Balwani over what it described as a “massive fraud.”