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Previously on The Dropout, Elizabeth Holmes on trial. It's been more than three years since Elizabeth Holmes was charged with multiple counts of fraud. If convicted, she could be facing decades in prison. But Elizabeth has seemingly been living life to its fullest. It's just amazing. Most people would be devastated, but not her. She lands on her feet and God knows what she's got planned next.
She's in a relationship with a hotel air nearly a decade her junior. I remember thinking, wow, you know, she just bounces right into the next opportunity. Good luck to that guy. And perhaps most surprisingly, at least to some, Elizabeth gave birth to her first child, a boy named William Holmes Evans, a month and a half before her criminal trial. Oh, well, I certainly was just waiting for that. It's a great way to garner jury sympathy.
Throughout it all, Elizabeth has maintained her innocence, but now a jury of 12 will have the final say. From ABC audio, this is The Dropout, Elizabeth Holmes on trial. Episode 2. Bombshell. It's August 31st, 2021, 1266 days since Elizabeth Holmes was charged with multiple counts of criminal fraud. A lot's happened in that time, but perhaps the most jaw-dropping Bombshell landed just three days ago.
This is a huge deal. Elizabeth Holmes is essentially alleging a decade-long history of systematic abuse, sexual abuse, even physical abuse. Caroline Polisi is a federal white collar criminal defense attorney in New York and has been defending people accused of financial fraud for over a decade.
The defense is really putting forth this argument that she had post-traumatic stress disorder and that she believed these misstatements that she then put forth to investors because she suffered from essentially a battered woman syndrome. Seems like this is going to be the main focus of this trial. How powerful might these accusations be in helping Elizabeth's defense?
We'll soon find out. Today, after four post-ponents, her long-awaited trial finally begins with jury selection. Her case will be heard in San Jose, California. The heart of Silicon Valley, located in Santa Clara County, one of the most affluent in the country. And it's all happening inside the Robert F. Peckham Federal Building and United States Courthouse. If you've seen footage of Elizabeth walking in and out of her pretrial hearings over the last few years, the image is familiar.
Elizabeth typically breezes past the gaggle of reporters, a polite smile on her face, eyes focused staring straight ahead. She never responds to questions from the crowd. Elizabeth, what do you think about this lengthy process? And she no longer wears a black turtleneck. Instead on court days, it's gray and navy skirt suits for Elizabeth. Her hair's been out of its signature bun, replaced with a wavy blowout. And in recent months, she's been showing a conspicuous baby bump.
What you haven't seen is what's been happening inside the courthouse during these pretrial dates. Elizabeth sits with pen and paper furiously taking notes. She paid very close attention. Any time the judge would talk about jury selection. ABC News field producer, Dia Affin, was at the court two weeks ago for a pretrial hearing. She literally turned her neck and crained to look to see where the jury would potentially be sitting.
And there's a good chance about 200 of those prospective jurors are just now walking through the courthouse doors, passing through the metal detectors and filing into courtroom four of the fifth floor of the building. It's a smallish space and seats about a hundred, even fewer with the new COVID restrictions like Plexiglass, now installed almost everywhere. It surrounds the judge's desk, the lecterns where the attorneys will be speaking and the end of the jury box.
While most in the courtroom will also be required to wear a mask, there's one person who's been pushing for an exception. Ms. Holmes lead attorney said that she has a strong preference to be maskless. You always want to humanize your client for the jury and you want the jurors to grow fond of the defendant to get a sense of attachment and you really can't do that behind masks.
Request like this one will ultimately be up to U.S. District Judge Edward Dovela for the Northern District of California. He'll be presiding over the trial. My name is Ed Dovela and I am a District Court judge from the Northern District of California. I sit in San Jose. Judge Dovela is 69 years old with a full head of salt and pepper hair and rectangular framed glasses. He's been a U.S. District Judge for a little over 10 years, appointed by President Obama.
Here's California Senator Barbara Boxer at a Senate confirmation hearing. Judge Dovela will be the only Latino serving on the Northern District Court. Judge Dovela was born in Palo Alto, one of three children raised by a single mother. And this isn't Judge Dovela's first high-profile case. He recently presided over portions of the Rick Singer Operation Varsity Blues trial, where parents and celebrities paid to get their kids into college.
Then there's the robust team of U.S. prosecutors led by assistant U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California, Jeffrey Schenk. He's been in the role for 10 years and his specialty is white collar prosecution. And finally, there's Team Elizabeth, some of the heaviest-hitting white collar defense attorneys in the country.
10 lawyers, nine from Williams and Connolly, a top DC firm with a sterling reputation and famous alums like Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and former Pfizer CEO Jeffrey Kindler. Elizabeth's lead attorney is Kevin Downey. You've probably seen him at Elizabeth's side walking into court. He's the guy with the white beard and pale blue eyes.
Kevin Downey has been a partner at Williams and Connolly for more than 20 years, with impeccable credentials, Harvard Law, Editor of the Harvard Law Review, and he's defended dozens of corporate executives, including the former CEO of Fannie Mae against allegations of fraud in 2004. But with millions of pages of discovery, a potential witness list of more than 200 and nearly 4,000 exhibits, Elizabeth's team of heavyweights has their work cut out.
And while there's still so much up in the air, one thing is certain, Elizabeth's legal bill, it's going to be astronomical. A whole lot of money. About eight figures. It would be eight figure defense. You're looking at tens of millions. That's criminal defense attorney Jose Bias. I've handled the defenses of Casey Anthony, Aaron Hernandez, as well as a billion dollar fraud cases on Wall Street.
Tens of millions of dollars. That's a lot of money, especially for a woman who claimed she couldn't afford to pay investors who sued Theranos for their losses, according to attorney Reed Kathrine, who represented many of them. You met Reed in season one. My belief in settling our case with her was that she had no money. And therefore, we basically had to look to other sources. So I am completely mystified as to who's paying for her defense and why?
In fact, in a separate civil suit, Elizabeth's attorneys quit after they say she wasn't paying them their fees. I paid her lawyers for over a year. And now they're asking a judge to let them quit. So who's footing that potential eight figure bill? It's most likely an insurance policy that's paying for these lawyers. Many of these big corporations have insurance policies that would indemnify their top executives, including criminal cases.
So even if the company goes bankrupt and they can't afford to pay investors who have been defrauded, they might not be covered by an insurance policy, but her defense would. Correct. And team Elizabeth is already proving it's worth. Perhaps the biggest win to date has been getting Elizabeth's trial severed from Sunny Bell Wannies. Keep please stay and spell your calling for the record. First name is Ramesh. Remember Sunny, Elizabeth's former boyfriend and their no COO. Most people call me Sunny.
The two first met when she was about 18. Sunny was 37. I met Miss Holmes in 2002 in China. We were in the same Stanford program at Beijing University. Then in 2009, Sunny came to Elizabeth's rescue, saving Theranos with a multi-million dollar good faith loan. So company was low on the cash and I ended up giving a 13 million dollar personal loan. Sunny also started working at Theranos, but they kept their relationship mostly a secret.
Did you ever tell investors that you and Mr. Ball Langy had a romantic relationship? At the time that you were asking them to invest in Theranos? No. Elizabeth and Sunny were originally charged together by the Department of Justice. But you won't see Sunny, who's also pleaded not guilty by Elizabeth's side at this trial. Their cases have been severed. Until three days ago, we only had small clues as to why.
But early in the morning on Saturday, August 28, Judge Davila unsealed 18 documents, revealing shocking, disturbing allegations of abuse. According to one filing, Elizabeth and Sunny had an abusive intimate partner relationship. Elizabeth alleges Sunny had psychological and emotional control over her, and that the pattern of abuse and coercive control lasted over their 10-year-long relationship.
Court documents indicate the defense is planning to introduce evidence Sunny verbally disparage Elizabeth, and withdrew affection if she displeased him, and that he controlled what she ate, how she dressed, how much money she could spend, who she could interact with. They alleged he monitored her calls, text messages, and emails, and was physically violent, throwing hard, sharp objects at her, restricting her sleep and monitoring her movements.
That he would insist any success she achieved was because of him. The documents claim just seeing Sunny or standing remotely near him could trigger, quote, debilitating PTSD symptoms for Elizabeth. Here's Caroline Polesey. The defense made this argument that Elizabeth has suffered so greatly at the hands of Balwani, and that therefore she couldn't even maintain her composure physically at the trial. I mean, that's a pretty devastating allegation.
So now we know the trials were severed because Elizabeth's team argued successfully she couldn't face alleged abuser, Sunny, and Court. Sunny will have his trial later next year. If I were Sunny's lawyers, I would be livid that I'm not going first because his name is going to get dragged through the mud, and he's really going to have no microphone to defend himself. So people are going to have a preconceived notion about him.
Back in December of 2019, Elizabeth's team shared they intended to introduce expert evidence from clinical psychologist Dr. Mindy McCannock, whose specialty is the psychological consequences of violence against women. We have Dr. Mindy McCannock, a professor of psychology at Cal State Fullerton, who specializes in psychological trauma. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for inviting me.
We now know Dr. McCannock's testimony will concern the alleged intimate partner violence and abuse. Elizabeth claims to have suffered at the hands of Sunny. The documents also show Dr. McCannock evaluated Elizabeth for 14 hours and also interviewed her parents and brother. It's really important to get a sense of how she was prior to this relationship and how she may have changed.
So her parents and her brother, anyone from her past, is going to be really important for the doctor to put forth her views. Sunny's lawyer, Jeffrey Cooper Smith, has called Elizabeth's allegations, salacious and inflammatory. He said they're deeply offensive to Mr. Balwani, devastating personally to him. Sunny categorically denies all allegations of abuse. Back when I spoke to Jeffrey Cooper Smith in 2019, he indicated no evidence of such a deeply fractured relationship.
He also made it crystal clear, Sunny was not going to throw Elizabeth under the bus. Does he feel in any way that he was duped by Elizabeth Holmes? No, that's not what is going on here. Mr. Balwani believed in Elizabeth Holmes and her vision for the company. He tried to execute that plan with her to make it a success. But no, he's not saying that he was duped. Does he hold her responsible for where everything stands today? No, they made mistakes along the way in executing a business plan.
Prior to today, we really haven't heard Elizabeth's say much on the topic of her relationship with Sunny, other than discussing his management style and their breakup. Once we started working together, it was a very intense working relationship and there, the sort of romantic piece that was there at the very beginning and died. I don't think it happened in one moment, but it was very clear that we were colleagues.
But we now know Elizabeth is firmly turning on Sunny. Here's Caroline Polisi again. What does the prosecution have to do now? They are really going to have to make an effort not to be perceived as victim blaming. So they need to sort of acknowledge potentially the conduct that Balwani did that he potentially inflicted on Elizabeth Holmes. While simultaneously really maintaining their argument that it did not negate her state of mind, that she still knew that she was misleading investors.
So it's a fine line. They don't want to alienate any jurors by appearing to be insensitive to the potential psychological and sexual abuse that Elizabeth suffered at the hands of Balwani. But they've got to maintain a strong case here and not sort of give in on that front. And it'll be a significant hurdle. Essentially the defense is arguing Elizabeth as a result of this alleged abuse had no control over her actions or decision making.
But to people like Kevin Hunter who saw Elizabeth and Sunny working together, interacting and dealing with clients. The idea she was somehow the one being influenced by him is impossible to imagine. She was clearly in charge. Remember, Kevin is the lab consultant, you met in season one, who raised red flags about Theranos back when Walgreens was looking to invest. Kevin originally told the story of that bizarre three o'clock in the afternoon dinner with Elizabeth and Sunny.
We get to this restaurant. There's no one there yet. We still meet in the back. You know Elizabeth got her standard kind of green protein shake that she got and was dressed in all black and Sunny got sushi or something like that. But we're not allowed to talk to each other by name yet. Sunny drives his Lamborghini.
So if you were concerned about people following you or seeing you or something like that, you know, why are you driving around Palo Alto and a black Lamborghini? It just didn't add up. Kevin's now been subpoenaed to testify at the trial. It's interesting that you say it was so obvious that Elizabeth wasn't charged because Elizabeth's defense maybe that she wasn't in charge, that this was really Sunny's operation. What would you say to that?
I don't know. That's just completely untrue. I mean, there's just no way. Sunny was a distant second. You know, she came up with the plans and the strategies and he helped execute him. He was the bad guy, but she ran the meetings. He rarely participated unless it had something to do with IT or whatever. It was clearly the Elizabeth show. There's no question about it.
He says he even warned the pair back before the Walgreens deal. They could end up facing serious legal trouble if the technology wasn't 100%. I had the conversation with Ernst Sunny and I said to them, this is not Facebook. You got to be careful. You're going to kill somebody. And hopefully you don't wind up in jail and her comment was too pretty to go to jail. What did Sunny say? He didn't say word.
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If Elizabeth is going to allege all her actions were controlled by sunny. How does that explain her behavior before he ever joined the company. Remember in February 2005 at least four years before sunny came on board Elizabeth was already making very bold claims to the press about her invention. Nation audio segment you're listening to our original on edited interview with Elizabeth Holmes president and CEO of Theronaut.
What is it exactly how big is it what is it to what you got to do for your using it so it's a handheld device and it's fully integrated the only thing you have to do is hold your finger or you could actually do any part of your hand or your arm up toward the device to extract the little from your hand exactly it's a little teeny needle that pulls a little teeny drop of blood and when it gets the drop of blood basically it runs it through what we call a bio chip which separates out all the cells and other types of analytes in your blood with the
blood which could traditionally clog a biosynth or and then in real time runs many different chemistries. It was around this time when Elizabeth hired product designer Anna Ariola away from Apple Elizabeth was very obsessed with Apple a lot of the time hired during our period were example. You met Anna in season one she joined Theronaut as its chief design architect and says she watched Elizabeth's transformation.
So she would wear these front be Christmas sweaters but how the clothing came into play she was very curious about Steve's attire. Some like Stanford professor Phyllis Gardner even remembered Elizabeth's voice changing dramatically when she came to me she didn't have a low voice she didn't know what was her voice like when she's like a typical undergrad student when I next are again. She says with this low voice and I call my God it was quite awesome you were
thrown but it wasn't just surface level peculiarities. Anna says she saw behavior in Elizabeth that surprised and in some cases upset her. She did not want to hear other people's opinions she wanted positive results. I think that you know anyone who basically told Elizabeth no and disagreed with her perspective and point of view you were
immediately terminated. One incident was particularly troubling to Anna. Elizabeth was going after big farm of business and she convinced a major drug company to let Theronauts test its technology on terminal cancer patients in a study in Tennessee. Truly vulnerable people. This made Anna really nervous because she says she knew the technology wasn't working. There were patients who were third and fourth stage oncology cancer patients at the University of
Tennessee that had given up their basically their blood to test this device. Anna says she and other employees had no idea the test results wouldn't impact the actual treatments given to these cancer patients. Elizabeth kept that detail from most Theronauts employees regardless. Anna hated making such vulnerable people guinea pigs and she confronted Elizabeth. And she basically conveyed to me that I should not intervene that this is an incredibly critical juncture in the
Chinese current fundraising and I was like that's unacceptable from an ethical perspective. I just cannot stomach it and I confronted her with this information and she gave me an ultimatum. Suppress it and continue on as business as usual or I said I was resigning and I decided to resign. I just literally had nothing I wanted to do with that company anymore.
This all happened at Theronauts years before Sonny ever arrived. Other employees hired around the same time as Anna like Justin Maxwell said they saw similar behaviors from Elizabeth. First watching people that I really trusted vanish and then actually noticing that this person is willing to lie to me
about extremely trivial unimportant things. And how do you know she lied? Oh, because we were discussing some product design over email and she was expecting me to stay in the office late to finish it up and she said something to the effect of you know like I can't you know I can't help with that right now but I will get back to you when I'm in the office tomorrow and she was actually just in an office right down the hall for me and I you could see her sending you that
so I walked over to her and had a bit of an argument with her and then we'll back to my office and she stormed after me and came in and shut the door behind me and said don't ever walk off on me again. Elizabeth's track record of grossly exaggerating her technology to the press creating what many describe as a secretive and toxic work environment allegedly lying to employees. Will it matter in the eyes of the law this
all happened before Sonny came to work at Theronauts? Here's Caroline Polisi again. Absolutely that is the type of evidence that the government is going to absolutely put forward to Polkhol's in this defense. It's highly relevant that she was making misstatements prior to even the time period alleged in the indictment. There's also the fact Elizabeth and Sonny are on the record about their disagreements. Sonny wasn't on board with Elizabeth doing press and she vigorously pursued it anyway.
I was a hellbent against media. In a text exchange between the pair in July 2015 Sonny tells Elizabeth quote, I do dislike the direction you've taken with all this PR. If Sonny was actually controlling every one of Elizabeth's moves, how did she manage to so frequently pursue media attention? Does that undermine the argument? These contradictions should be useful to the government's case according to Caroline Polisi.
They're going to have to show that she acted independently. So for example, they may introduce evidence that Sonny didn't want her to do press interviews and that she nonetheless went forward and did it, showing that she had a mind of her own, that she was an independent person making independent judgments with respect to both the company really enter personal life. So any evidence of that nature is going to go really far in terms of rebutting this defense.
And finally, how does Elizabeth's post-therinose life, a new relationship, a new baby, factor into this new narrative? Will a jury believe she could seemingly bounce back so quickly? Well, that's exactly what the prosecution is now going to be allowed to introduce into evidence.
This is going to be an uphill battle by all accounts for the defense. They are going to have to show that, you know, while she appeared to the outside world to be so high functioning, that she was suffering inside from this abuse. Even considering how inflammatory these newly revealed claims are, they could backfire with the jury according to attorney Jose Bias. People in general are not very sympathetic to mental health defenses. They're very difficult cases.
So what other tactics might the defense introduce? While the alleged abuse will be front and center, at the heart of the case is fraud. And her attorneys have signaled they might also try the so-called puffy defense. The idea of Silicon Valley is filled with people faking it till they make it. It's just par for the course. Former US attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preparara, had this to say. I can see the defense arguing, and I've seen this before at trials.
I said, that was just, you know, a good faith exaggeration. They were just puffing a little because that's what sales people do. And you might buy that, but there's a fine line between puffery and lying, right? And one of the issues that's at play here is representation that the company made through Elizabeth and maybe others that they had, you know, their product used on the battlefield. That the Department of Defense embraced the product and the technology.
And I think any fair reading of the evidence is that you really can't get out of the truth that this was never used on the battlefield. So depending on how many examples the prosecution has of so-called puffy, I believe given what I know it will likely fall flat. And puffy with doctors and patients is a very different path than puffy with investors.
It's much more difficult when you're talking about patients who are not sophisticated, who don't have investment bankers, who are just people who want a good product. I think jurors will take less of a generous view. They can all imagine themselves to be patients. And they can all imagine themselves feeling duped if they were told that you can have a small needle and they can test for all these conditions.
And it's really simple, it's really fast and it's super accurate. And if that's wrong, I think that's going to make them upset. And as for that jury, team Elizabeth's been fighting tooth and nail over what they'll see and won't see at trial, like possibly incriminating emails and texts between Elizabeth and Sunny. In season one, we revealed the pair's frequent exchanges that came to light when the two were separately deposed by the SEC in 2017.
There's an SMS message on November 19th, 2014. And it appears to be from Sunny Balwani to yourself. Is this Sunny Balwani's email address? I think so. Sunny texted Elizabeth when the deal with Walgreens seemed to be blowing up behind the scenes. And he says, we can't scale with WAD. And WAD, you understand his Walgreens? Yes. Okay. And then in his next text message, he says, they are terrible and we need SWY and CDS. Well, there were even more damning texts between the two.
In one, Sunny message is Elizabeth. Normandy lab is a f*** disaster zone. Remember, Normandy is the lab where Theranos kept its supposedly groundbreaking finger prick blood testing device. On the next day, later writes, our validation reports are terrible, really painful going through this process. Same issues FDA point out. Going bad so far. Pray. Elizabeth's response? Praying. Praying continually.
Prosecutors spent three days at a pretrial hearing arguing those messages should be allowed as evidence. But Elizabeth's team pushed back. The text originated from a subpoena issued by the SEC. And they were collected on a spreadsheet by Wilmer Hale, a law firm retained by Theranos. The defense claimed there were authenticity issues. They could have been tampered with or suffered from human error. Even though, remember, it was Theranos themselves who provided it.
I would say the fervor with which Elizabeth's attorneys are fighting to keep them out, give some indication of sort of the level of relevance that they may or may not have. Elizabeth was even shown the spreadsheet in her depositions with the SEC in 2017. Under oath, she testified she had no reason to believe the messages weren't hers.
These are the file that Theranos provided to the SEC pursuant to subpoena, which is supposed to reflect the text messages between you and Mr. Balwani on your Theranos issued cell phone. Yes. Do you have any reason to believe that this isn't a true collection of those text messages from your work cell phone? No. But the defense's argument worked for now. So now it's on the government to authenticate the messages if they want to show them a trial. How difficult might that be?
The way the judge ruled it basically teed it up for the government. All it would take to authenticate the document would be for that attorney to get on the stand and say, you know, testify to how he handled, you know, the information. It's a pretty low bar and I think it's pretty clear that the text messages will at some point come in because the government will be able to meet that low bar. There were also 13 email exchanges the defense has fought desperately to keep out of view.
Some are between Elizabeth and former Theranos board member and council David boys. David boys, by the way, is one of the leading trial attorneys of his time. He represented Al Gore in the presidential recount of 2000. He later helped pioneer the legalization of gay marriage, but he's also known as an intimidating corporate litigator. And he was the long time attorney of Harvey Weinstein. And remember, Elizabeth's relationship with David boys wasn't that straightforward.
He worked closely with her, even helping to arrange interviews for her, like the famous fortune article by Roger Parloff that said her finger print technology could run 200 tests. Did you reach out to Mr. Parloff? My reasoning is David reached out to him. David Boy is yes. David's PR person told me that it was going to be a cover story and that it was going to be a big piece on Theranos.
Williams and Connolly was hoping Elizabeth's complicated relationship with David Boy's would grant her attorney client privilege. But that's not going to fly. Judge Davila has ruled the communications are admissible. The actual 13 communications at the time of this podcast were sealed. But we know from court documents what they generally cover, legal strategies for dealing with journalists, investors, and regulators. Recall attorney Reed Kathrein, who sued Theranos on behalf of investors.
In the process, he recovered a stash of what he says appeared to be Elizabeth's private notes to herself. And he has some theories about what's in those documents. Yeah, those documents are probably very, very key and very damning. And the reason I say that is in the production that Theranos gave to us, I was able to find a place where Elizabeth Holmes kept her notes. Notes to herself. So what exactly was Elizabeth keeping to herself? Mainly what looks like her conversations with David Boy's.
Also, there's some rumination about leaving the country. So pack the bags, leave the country, something like that. And it's clear that she's upset that she's trying to figure out how to get out of this mess, how she's going to deal with the press, or how she's going to deal with the board. I suspect she was in part coming clean with David. I think she trusted him very much.
But the most important thing about the notes, she appears to be talking about the issues of whether or not she intended to deceive. And finally, there's the issue of the missing database. It's accused the government of losing a database that contained three years worth of accuracy and failure rates of Theranos' tests. Prosecutors alleged that Theranos executives destroyed that database because it proved that the blood testing product was inaccurate.
At the heart of it is the laboratory information system. It contained three years of Theranos' test results, data on millions of patient tests. But the database was destroyed. This made big headlines when it came up earlier in the summer. Yes, the infamous missing database. It's clearly it's been a very hotly contested issue from the start of this case. And both sides have really pointed the finger at the other.
The prosecution tried to argue that Theranos intentionally destroyed this database, with all its potentially incriminating false patient results. But the judge ruled they would not be able to introduce this theory unless they could show an actual link to Elizabeth. The defense, on the other hand, wanted to use the database or lack thereof to block the government from calling 11 Theranos customers and 11 medical professionals who would testify about inaccurate tests from Theranos.
Elizabeth's team claimed that without the database, the evidence of these patients and medical professionals would just be anecdotal. The fact that the database no longer exists is you argued that, well, you know, the government here is trying to put on 11 patients saying that they got inaccurate test results when that really is a statistically insignificant number. But in a win for the government, the judge decided prosecutors can put the 11 patients they've identified on the stand.
Team Elizabeth can try all they want to argue their stories aren't statistically significant. But a jury might find that hard to accept when these patients actually disclose what their false results were. One patient received a false HIV positive diagnosis. Some women received results indicating they were pregnant when they weren't. One woman who'd struggled with fertility for years got an inaccurate result indicating she had miscarried.
Elizabeth's team also fought to exclude testimony from patients that went into the emotional impact of these inaccurate results. And they succeeded. The judge is allowing the fact of the inaccurate result to come in and what that indicates that can come into evidence, but he's not allowing some of that more emotional testimony about the effects sort of psychologically that it had on the witness. I was emotionally devastated things like that. But false pregnancies, false HIV positive results.
The government is banking on a jury understanding just how devastating that type of misdiagnosis would be, emotional elaboration or not. When it comes to weight loss, no two people are the same. That's why NUM builds personalized plans based on your unique psychology and biology. Take Brittany. After years of unsustainable diets, NUM helped her lose 20 pounds and keep it off. I was definitely in a yo-yo cycle for years of just losing weight, gaining weight and it was exhausting.
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The handbags, the makeup, the jewelry, the shoes, the wardrobe, all on the company dime. The jury will hear it. Elizabeth may not have cashed out of her Theranos shares along the way, but prosecutors will argue she certainly cashed in on her celebrity and used her title as founder and CEO to obtain, quote, personal benefits.
Jurors will also see Elizabeth the new mom, another stunning addition to this story that didn't at all surprise many of the people you met in season one like Phyllis Gardner, Elizabeth's former Stanford professor. It's a great way to to garner jury sympathy. Trust me, I was an expert witness once well pregnant and I turned the whole case around. And I think, you know, they'll worry about sending a woman to a prison with a baby, but it will garner sympathy with a jury inevitably.
But Jose Bias says the defense has to be careful with the baby. That could backfire significantly. Jurors, they understand that people have lives. It's important to remind them of such because sometimes they forget. But to have it in their face like that and to use a baby as a pond once a juror feels that one side is trying to manipulate them over another. They're not going to like it. I don't think you start a trial off by insulting the jury's intelligence.
Bottom line, Elizabeth's baby is going to have an impact. Here's attorney Caroline Polisey. You know, right or wrong, that is going to have a bearing on the jury's perception of her. You know, those types of things actually play a really large role in trials, even though they're not supposed to, right? Showing the jury, hey, you know, this is a young mother. This is somebody who has a partner and a life and a baby that is counting on them.
I think that not only is that going to help her in her trial, but it will really help her in the event that she is convicted and at sentencing the fact that she is a young new mother is going to play into any potential sentence that she gets. But what this case is really going to boil down to is Elizabeth herself.
Can she convince 12 jurors, same as she convinced distinguished Theranos board members like former secretaries of state George Schultz and Henry Kissinger and high profile investors like Rupert Murdoch. Kissinger and Murdoch, by the way, are also on the witness list to testify, along with other Theranos board members, including former senator Bill Frist and Admiral Gary Ruffhead.
Who does the jury get to see the woman who always presented herself in profiles and interviews like this one with Forbes as a visionary, someone with all the answers. We are the only lab company that is actually really focused on leading with transparency or the woman who under oath with the SEC suddenly profess to remember very little. I don't know specifically I'm pleading her ignorance over I don't know exactly an over and over again.
I don't know more than 660 times or is there some new version of Elizabeth will see in court will a jury buy it. So I just don't know. Will Elizabeth actually speak now we know she almost certainly will. In the very court filings outlining the defense's intention to raise issues about Elizabeth's relationship with Sonny. Her attorneys wrote Miss Holmes is likely to testify herself to the reasons why she believed relied on and deferred to Mr. Balwani.
They have said it's highly likely that she will take the stand which is more than most expensive attorneys ever do. I would say with 99% certainty we will see Elizabeth Holmes taking the stand in her trial which is really quite extraordinary. It doesn't happen very often in trials of this nature. So can the woman who never seemed to miss an opportunity in the spotlight convinced her most important audience yet.
Coming up on the dropout Elizabeth Holmes on trial who will that audience be the 12 jurors deciding Elizabeth's fate. They're not going to let a single person into that jury poll that may have been treated which is going to be hard to find. Will they tilt in favor of the prosecution or the defense if you're the prosecution what kind of jurors are you looking for in this case.
Somebody that has absolutely no empathy for a person that's in trouble and someone that wants to enforce the law no matter what. She just needs one person to fall in love with her like so many have and say stop don't persecute this young pretty woman who's a mother. That's the hope. Elizabeth Holmes Sonny Bellwani Channing Robertson Billy Evans and the Evans family did not respond or declined comment for this podcast.
The dropout Elizabeth Holmes on trial is written and reported by Victoria Thompson Taylor Dunn and me. Victoria is the executive producer Taylor and I are the producers. For ABC audio Susie Lou is producer and Madeline Wood is associate producer. Our field producer is Dia Athan. For ABC's business unit our associate producer is Victor Ardonia's and our production assistant is Lane Wynn. Mixing and scoring is by Rob Galang and Evan Viola. Evan also composed the music for the dropout.
Our artwork is by Teddy Blanks at Chips and Y and Cedric Hanstad. For ABC audio Liz Alessie is executive producer. Special thanks to Josh Cohan, Elizabeth Russo, Ian Rosenberg, Eric Avram and Stacia D'Sheeshko. Be sure to subscribe to the dropout podcast and if you like what you heard leave us a review. It really does help. With some new episodes every Tuesday.