Elizabeth Holmes lives on a 74-acre property in northern California with nine bedrooms. It’s valued at $135 million.
Later this fall, she faces the sentencing phase for her felony fraud conviction and is facing the real prospect of spending decades in federal prison.
A few years ago, she was on the cover of Forbes, proclaimed the youngest female self-made billionaire ever. Now she’s a disgrace, most famous for her faux Baritone voice and closet full of black turtlenecks.
She’s in a desperate place, and because of that, she’s doing desperate things in hopes she’ll be able to talk or con (depending on whom you ask) her way into getting what she wants.
The most realistic chance of holding off sentencing and packing for prison is by making a compelling case that she deserves a re-trial, and she’s playing that card aggressively. Just last week, in the span of two days, she and her legal team made three separate requests for a new trial.
She is asking the judge to toss aside her conviction because of “insufficient evidence.”
Her team is contending the prosecution’s star witness came to her house last month and told her he regretted his testimony in the case, saying the prosecution used tricks to make things seem worse than they were.
While Holmes probably got fired up about hearing that, the problem is that it is very common, where a witness who had a personal relationship or connection with a defendant feels regret after testifying. This witness was her former lab director at Theranos, Adam Rosendorff.
Another thing hampering her effort is that her defense team had ample time cross-examining Rosendorff during the trial.
One other area Holmes is honing in on is how the jury was divided in her case. She was convicted on four charges the justice department brought, acquitted on four others, and there was a jury deadlock on three charges.
The judge will hear arguments from both sides about the requests for a new trial on October 3. Judgment day is October 17, the tentative scheduling date.
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