Some of our most devoted subscribers here at AP are probably wondering why today’s post from your solitary reporter is the first of this new year.
Without straying into unnecessary complexities, let’s just say that we have been breathlessly awaiting a verdict in the Elizabeth Holmes fraud trial in San Jose, and yesterday, a partial verdict
was announced after the beleaguered jury struggled for many days to reach a verdict in that complex fraud case (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/03/technology/elizabeth-holmes-guilty.html and https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/03/technology/elizabeth-holmes-theranos.html).
Creative and charismatic people like Elizabeth Holmes, especially with her attractiveness, have a way of convincing prominent investors with huge cachets like Henry Kissinger, to invest in her
superfically promising startup, Theranos, a biotech company that, until it was shut down in 2018, claimed, through Holmes and her former boyfriend, that it was a biotechnology company that could
perform all sorts of blood tests at a much simpler level. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theranos.
But her hypes ran afoul of the Securities and Exchange Commission, leading directly to her criminal trial, in which prosecutors from Attorney General Merrick Garland’s Justice Department proved
that she was guilty of four counts of fraud. Three charges were deadlocked and the jury announced their guilty verdicts yesterday, and the media presence at the federal courthouse caused
noticeable traffic congestion in the middle of downtown San Jose.
When she testified, she blamed much of her fraudulent activity not on herself, but on her former boyfriend, who has been indicted as well, and on her staffers. She claimed she had never
intentionally deceived anyone. She was only 19 when she developed Theranos.
So what we have here is Greed, personified by Holmes’
lies — she attracted high-flying investors, was in a relationship with a man who abused her and controlled her life, including her Theranos company. But she wouldn’t do what our legal system
requires, namely, take responsibility.
The best of our vast corps of associate solitary reporters to cover this topic for us is our California-based associate solitary reporter, Susanna Sherman, who attended all the dramatic twists
and turns of Holmes’ trial.
Sherman has the ability, which she shares with your solitary reporter and his numerous colleagues, of going all over the world without being detected. In other words, she lives in a world of
illusion, and, like Zeus of old, can change herself instantly into a fly on the wall.
As she covered the Holmes trial, Sherman was accompanied by our only today newly minted associate solitary reporter, Marianne Hunter, a prominent Denver activist on behalf of Denver’s homeless.
Hunter learned much from Sherman during the trial. Expect to hear more from ASR Hunter as she upends all the stuffy establishment types in Denver who think there’s nothing unfair about
homeless people sleeping on sidewalks in downtown Denver.
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