China cracks down on cryptocurrency, banning transactions and mining.

3 hours ago

Erin Griffith

Initially Mattis thought the problem was fixable — the company simply messed up its messaging and could come clean. Soon after, he began to question whether or not the Edison machine worked. “There just came a point when I didn’t know what to believe about Theranos anymore.”

3 hours ago

Erin Griffith

After WSJ article, board members emailed Holmes about the allegations. Her response: Theranos was transitioning from operating under one laboratory framework to another. Mattis: “I was still confused.” At a minimum, “we had a reputation problem here and an integrity problem.”

4 hours ago

Erin Griffith

Ominous. After Theranos learned about a 2015 WSJ article by John Carreyrou that exposed problems with Theranos’s technology, there was a board meeting with a slide titled “Duty of Loyalty.” We are shown that slide, except it is comically redacted — all content blacked out — and Mattis doesn’t remember it.

4 hours ago

Erin Griffith

We see an email from Holmes instructing Mattis that, in an interview with Ken Auletta of The New Yorker, he can’t discuss “how our technology works (i.e. that there is a single device that does all tests)”

4 hours ago

Erin Griffith

Fortune published a long correction to that article, which I don’t remember seeing from a lot of other outlets that wrote positive stories. Parloff is listed as a witness and defense is attempting to compel him to turn over his notes.

4 hours ago

Erin Griffith

Assistant U.S. attorney John Bostic pulls up Fortune’s 2014 cover story about Theranos. Mattis spoke to the reporter, Roger Parloff, and said Holmes gave him guidance on what he could and couldn’t say.

4 hours ago

Erin Griffith

Still trying to train my brain to not hear “amino acid” every time they say “immunoassay”

4 hours ago

Erin Griffith

Theranos got a lot of mileage out of a 2013 WSJ article! We see an email where Holmes sends Mattis the link, as well as a slide of it in a Theranos board presentation

4 hours ago

Erin Griffith

We’re going through this board presentation, which has a slide claiming Theranos’s tech had been validated by 10 of the 15 largest pharmaceutical companies, alongside logos of FDA & WHO and a quote from Johns Hopkins.

4 hours ago

Erin Griffith

What were your sources for information about the company? Mattis: “Ms. Holmes.” “Was she the primary source?” “The sole source.”

4 hours ago

Erin Griffith

Mattis also invested $85k into Theranos, which he said was a significant sum “for someone who had been in govt. service for 40 years.”

4 hours ago

Erin Griffith

Did you accept Ms. Holmes’s invitation to join Theranos’s board? “Yes I did, after asking why. I was not a medical person.” She said she wanted his mgmt. and organizational experience.

5 hours ago

Erin Griffith

Mattis testified that he was not aware of Theranos devices ever being used on battlefields, military helicopters, clandestine operations…

5 hours ago

Erin Griffith

Mattis testified that Holmes was “very aggressive” at wanting the military pilot program to get going. “She was very confident that if we got it in there, it would prove itself.” He knew it was a start-up, but noted that Holmes had been working on it for a decade by 2013.

5 hours ago

Erin Griffith

oy, another email where Mattis calls Holmes “young Elizabeth.”

5 hours ago

Erin Griffith

Holmes was the one telling him about the Theranos device’s capabilities, he said. “I was frankly amazed at what was possible.” But he added: “That didn’t take the place of having the device prove itself.”

5 hours ago

Erin Griffith

Mattis testified the size of the Theranos device and its promised capabilities made it so attractive to potential military use. Accuracy and reliability were critical given the casualties, he said. “The stakes are very high.”

5 hours ago

Erin Griffith

Mattis, a U.S. general and former secretary of defense, was on Theranos’s board between 2013 and 2016.

We start by looking at 2011 emails between them after meeting. In one, Mattis writes, “thank you for your note, young Elizabeth, and I wish you every success.”

5 hours ago

Erin Griffith

At the courthouse for US v. Holmes. James Mattis has taken the stand.

1 day ago

Erin Griffith

Gould’s testimony lasted around 15 minutes – From behind a clear mask, she got emotional discussing her experience finding out via Theranos tests that, after three miscarriages, her fourth pregnancy was not viable. The happy ending is that it was. She had a baby. Adjourned!

1 day ago

Erin Griffith

Defense wraps up by pointing out that Zachman’s practice had many many test results from Theranos beyond Ms. Gould that seemed to be fine. Judge Davila is eager to keep going, even though we are over on time today. Brittany Gould takes the stand.

1 day ago

Erin Griffith

Defense works to chip away at the testimony by implying that the Theranos test results simply existed on a different scale and should have been “rebaselined.” Also noted that Holmes’s brother Christian, who responded to Zachman’s complaint about the results, apologized.

1 day ago

Erin Griffith

Oh my, Theranos offered Zachman a “corrected” version of the results which simply removed a decimal point but the she says numbers still wouldn’t have made sense within the context of a viable pregnancy or a loss of one.

1 day ago

Erin Griffith

“This circumstance was very impactful to me as it stood out as such a red flag for the pregnancy.”

1 day ago

Erin Griffith

Gould took 5 blood tests, 3 from a subsidiary of Quest Diagnostics and 2 from Theranos. She went on a rollercoaster, with the Quest test showing she was pregnant, the two Theranos tests showing a miscarriage, and 2 more Quest tests showing she was indeed still pregnant.

1 day ago

Erin Griffith

Zachman describes the case of a patient named Brittany Gould (sp?) who had had 3 miscarriages. She came to see Gould after a positive at-home pregnancy test “to establish that yes, she is pregnant and look at the health of the pregnancy.”

1 day ago

Erin Griffith

Zachman was on a committee that evaluated service providers and her practice adopted Theranos blood tests around 2014. Theranos even set up a lab downstairs from one of her practice’s offices, which Zachman said was “very exciting.”

1 day ago

Erin Griffith

New witness: Audra Zachman, a nurse practitioner at an OB-GYN practice.

1 day ago

Erin Griffith

I have enjoyed chatting with some of the trial-heads and and fans of justice who have shown up to watch (provided they’re not moles :). Today I met a retired paralegal who says he was at the Patty Hearst trial!!

1 day ago

Erin Griffith

Redirect up. US Attorney Robert Leach reminds jurors that when Gangakhedkar resigned from Theranos, she had concerns about the reliability of Theranos’s tests and discussed them with Holmes.

1 day ago

Erin Griffith

More bad boss/good boss content: We see an email Gangakhedkar sent to Balwani defending how hard her team was working + an email she sent to her team praising their long hours. She then resigned from Theranos and Holmes attempted to get her to stay, offering time off.

1 day ago

Erin Griffith

Defense previously showed that Holmes let Gangakhedkar go to India to see family, painting her as a sympathetic boss and Balwani as the aggressive one. “[Balwani’s] trying to make you feel guilty that you weren’t working?” “Yes” “You were frustrated by that?” “Yes.”

1 day ago

Erin Griffith

We are still doing cross-examination of Gangakhedkar.

Wade shows an email from the former Theranos president, Ramesh Balwani (who goes by Sunny), chastising the lab workers for not working as hard as his software team, painting him as the one pushing unrealistically for overwork.

1 day ago

Erin Griffith

Zachman will now offer expert testimony on interpreting HCG tests (a hormone used to identify pregnancy status)

You expect HCG levels to double every 48 hours or so in early pregnancy.

1 day ago

Erin Griffith

Wade goes on a run of questions (peppered with “yes” responses by Gangakhedkar) arguing that the point of R&D is encountering issues and setbacks and fixing them.

“In R&D sometimes you have to fail before you can succeed right?”
“Yes.”

1 day ago

Erin Griffith

We see an email where Holmes asked Gangakhedkar for some testing data ahead of a meeting with the DoD. Gangakhedkar emails that Vitamin D data isn’t ready and Holmes writes asking for data on other tests. The point is, apparently, look at this example of Holmes not doing fraud.

1 day ago

Erin Griffith

The Defense strategy re: Theranos lab problems seems to be: look, real work was being done; there were processes in place that sure seemed rigorous; the very people pointing out problems also signed off on it all.

1 day ago

Erin Griffith

So far it’s basically a call and response, where Wade describes work of Gangakhedkar + Theranos’s lab, and Gangakhedkar replies “yes.” “Were you proud of that work?” “Yes.” “And others at the company were happy about that work as well?” “I think so.”

1 day ago

Erin Griffith

Back in the San Jose courtroom today for more US v Holmes. Surekha Gangakhedkar, a scientist at Theranos, is back on the stand being cross-examined by Holmes’s lawyer Lance Wade.

5 days ago

Erin Woo

With that, Judge Davila is ending Gangakhedkar’s testimony for the day and instructing jurors not to consume media content about the trial, as always. The trial will resume on Tuesday — Erin Griffith will be at the courthouse to bring you live updates.

5 days ago

Erin Woo

We are now onto cross-examination. Holmes’s lawyer is questioning her about G.S.K.’s study of Theranos’s assays, pointing out that the study promoted her work. “The Theranos system eliminates the need for a lab and provided quality data,” the G.S.K. memo said.

5 days ago

Erin Woo

Despite having signed an N.D.A., Gangakhedkar printed out some documents and took them home when she left Theranos. “I was worried that I would be blamed,” she testified.

5 days ago

Erin Woo

Three days after the email from Balwani, Gangakhedkar sent Holmes her resignation email. She testified that she was “very stressed and unhappy and concerned” with the planning of the Walgreens launch.

5 days ago

Erin Woo

In an email from Balwani to Gangakhedkar, with Holmes copied, Balwani said the software team had been working until 3:07 a.m., but that the Edison blood-testing devices Gangakhedkar’s team worked on were “all sitting idle.” This was an example of the pressure they were under, Gangakhedkar said.

5 days ago

Erin Woo

And, with that, Cheung has been dismissed. The government is calling Surekha Gangakhedkar now, a former Theranos team manager.

5 days ago

Erin Woo

The government is now asking questions about a document that says, among other things, that Theranos’s devices “can be operated with minimal training” and that its results have “precision and accuracy equivalent to traditional clinical laboratory analyzers.” Neither is true, Cheung says.

5 days ago

Erin Woo

Cheung said they were constantly having to recalibrate the machines, which made results take 2-3 days rather than the couple hours promised. “We had people sleeping in the car because it was taking too long,” she said.

5 days ago

Erin Woo

Cheung just said she “became concerned about a month in” with the vitamin D samples, in November of 2013. She was concerned about the performance of the tests and that they were being used on patient samples.

5 days ago

Erin Woo

Defense is done with cross-examination, after showing Cheung Theranos policy documents she said she’d never seen. The government is now asking questions again for redirect.

5 days ago

Erin Woo

Holmes’s lawyer is asking Cheung a lot of questions about quality control checks that occurred on the Theranos devices. “There is a recognition that some errors would happen and this was the policy on how to deal with those errors,” he said.

5 days ago

Erin Woo

Erika Cheung is now taking the stand as cross-examination continues.

5 days ago

Erin Woo

The update you’ve all been waiting for: The judge is STILL pronouncing it ther-AH-nos.

5 days ago

Erin Woo

In the courthouse now for another day of the Elizabeth Holmes trial. We’re expecting to wrap up testimony today from Erika Cheung, one of the key whistleblowers in the case.

7 days ago

Erin Griffith

That’s it for today.????????⚖️

7 days ago

Erin Griffith

So far the theme of the cross-exam of Cheung seems to be using excruciatingly arcane details about the processes and procedures of the Theranos lab to show that its work was very complicated, involving lots of smart, pedigreed people.

7 days ago

Erin Griffith

Cheung testified that in meetings about quality control failures, Theranos’s lab directors ignored the most obvious possible reason for the failures: “The Edison devices didn’t work.”

7 days ago

Erin Griffith

Trial gear alert: A reporter brought their own binoculars to see the exhibits on the TV screens.

7 days ago

Erin Griffith

Erika Cheung is back on the stand.

She described Theranos’s practice of demoing blood tests for V.I.P.s, where some of the results came from Theranos machines and others from Siemens analyzers.

7 days ago

Erin Griffith

At this point we have heard lawyers and witnesses pronounce “Theranos” hundreds of times, making me start to wonder whether judge is trying to mess with us by sticking to his “ther-AHHHHH-nos” pronunciation.

7 days ago

Erin Griffith

I should note the woman who clapped and yelled “you’re a good mom!” at Holmes yesterday suddenly stormed out of the courtroom after Judge Davila warned everyone that yelling stuff like that in front of any jurors could cause a mistrial. I don’t see her here today!

7 days ago

Erin Griffith

Elizabeth Holmes’s entourage is down to just her mom today.