Elizabeth Holmes, Angling For Trump Pardon, Challenges Specific Evidence From Her Trial

Elizabeth Holmes's best bet for getting out early from the Texas prison where she's incarcerated is probably a pardon from President Trump himself, and she's using social media, via a surrogate, to make her case.

President Trump has doled out a bunch of questionable pardons already in his second term, including for 1,600 January 6th rioters who he recast as "political prisoners," and it's not like Trump has much respect for the judicial system or rule of law, full stop. So what would really stop him from giving a pardon to little old Elizabeth Holmes, whose infamous fake-it-til-you-make-it Silicon Valley fraud case pales in comparison to the frauds Trump is perpetrating daily?

You can't blame her for trying, and Holmes sure seems to be trying to throw up some digital flares to get Trump's attention. In her latest tweet — which was likely posted by baby daddy Billy Evans or another close friend or confidante, because she does not have access to social media in prison — Holmes is questioning a very specific piece of evidence against her from her 2022 trial.

"False Claim of Fraud: Theranos faked Pfizer endorsement to defraud investors by adding logo," says a new tweet on Holmes's X account, posted Tuesday morning. "Truth: 16 months of work in partnership with Pfizer who paid $900,000 for the validation. The data, the study design, the results, were unedited. Gemini agreees You tell me?" The tweet comes with a screenshot of a document that has both Pfizer's and Theranos' logos on the top of it, which seems to be a report on the efficacy of Theranos' blood-testing technology.

As Bay Area News Group explains, Theranos distributed reports like this validating their tech to investors and business partner Walgreens, and prosecutors argued that placing Pfizer's logo on the report — which Holmes admitted to doing on the stand — suggested Pfizer's endorsement of its claims. Meanwhile, a Pfizer scientist, Shane Weber, testified that he disagreed with the claims in the report and told his superiors they should stop investing any money or resources in Theranos.

Holmes seems to be arguing that because Pfizer paid $900,000 to Theranos for an exploratory study, that amounted to a paid partnership, and the use of the logo merely reflected that partnership — other aspects of the document point to Theranos's authorship, including its footer, the tweet argues.

This is all sort of in the weeds, so to speak, and Trump isn't likely to worry too much about these details if he is, indeed, considering a pardon for Holmes.

He might, however, like some of her other recent tweets, like one in October where she claimed that federal prosecutors suggested she get an abortion, after she became pregnant leading up to her trial — a pregnancy that certainly looked like a calculated bid for juror sympathy, but which Holmes now says was "bad timing" and not planned.

The tweet seems less about an anti-abortion message as an anti-government one. Holmes continues, "The government had limited my communication with nearly everyone in my life. I spent 16 years building Theranos and I was prohibited from talking to nearly everyone involved. I was prevented from speaking publicly about the case, telling my story and defending my innocence. The last thing I was going to let them control is as my body, my family, the life of an innocent child, my unborn son."

Trump, who himself has used social media approximately two million times to crow about his own innocence and the unfairness of the prosecutions launched against him in recent years — as well as his absolute innocence in his first impeachment — seems likely to sympathize with this line of complaint.

And as Bay Area News Group earlier pointed out, Holmes retweeted this right-wing influencer's tweet about helping the ailing cartoonist Scott Adams, and she praised Trump-supporting pastor Mark Burns. She also posted a Politico story last month about how the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement has "embraced" her, with some MAHA figures tweeting about taking a new look at the case that put Holmes in prison.

"I have been working to Make America Healthy Again since 2004," Holmes wrote. "I will continue to dedicate my life ahead to improving healthcare in this beautiful country I call home," adding an American flag emoji.

The only thing going against Holmes in her pardon campaign is the fact that among Theranos' investor-victims is Trump ally and former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, and probably a few others.

Holmes likely would love to get back to work with baby dady Billy on the new blood-testing startup he bizarrely launched this year, called Haemanthus. Holmes denies any involvement with the company — she's also under a court order not to work in the biotech industry for ten years — but it certainly would seem to have her fingerprints all over it. The company is promoting a device, not unlike the failed "Edison" machine that Theranos was building, which would provide quick blood, urine, and saliva testing for animals. The company, which reportedly has $20 million in the bank, claims to be interested only in veterinary diagnostics for now, which may exempt it from at least some scrutiny by the government.

Incidentally, Holmes's prison-mate, former Real Housewives of Salt Lake City star Jen Shah, is getting early release next week. And their other prison-mate, Ghislaine Maxwell, is also actively seeking her own release and likely angling for a Trump pardon — though Trump has plenty of political reasons not to grant that one.

Related: With Appeal Options Nearly Exhausted, Elizabeth Holmes Seeks Two-Year Sentence Reduction

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