Elizabeth Holmes Seeks Freedom as New Film Reopens the Theranos Scandal

**WASHINGTON** — At her 2021 criminal fraud trial in San Jose, California, Elizabeth Holmes’s defense introduced handwritten notes on stationery from the luxury Raffles Hotel in Singapore. The documents described a tightly regimented daily schedule and strict behavioral dictums that Holmes had written to herself.

The routine began at 4:00 a.m. with the instruction to “rise & thank God,” followed by a diet of green juice, broccoli, and quinoa. The notes also included mantras intended to build an unshakeable executive persona:

* “ALL ABOUT BUSINESS.”
* “I am not impulsive.”
* “I do not react.”
* “I am always proactive.”
* “I know the outcome of every encounter.”
* “I do not hesitate.”
* “I speak rarely. When I do—CRISP and CONCISE. I call bullshit immediately. My hands are always in my pockets or gesturing.”

Holmes testified that the guidelines were not her own rules, but mandates imposed by Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, her former romantic partner and Theranos Chief Operating Officer, who was 19 years her senior. She said Balwani subjected her to intense emotional, psychological, and sexual abuse that systematically eroded her self-esteem. According to her testimony, he frequently called her mediocre and warned that she would fail if she trusted her own instincts.

Balwani’s defense counsel, Jeffrey Coopersmith, repeatedly and vigorously denied the abuse allegations during the trial and in subsequent legal proceedings. Prosecutors, meanwhile, portrayed Holmes as a calculating executive who knowingly deceived investors, while her defense team presented her as an idealistic visionary manipulated and controlled by Balwani.

The jury rejected the attempt to fully absolve Holmes of responsibility. In January 2022, she was convicted on three counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, although she was acquitted of charges related to defrauding patients. U.S. District Judge Edward Davila sentenced her to 11.25 years in federal prison.

More than a decade after the spectacular collapse of her blood-testing startup Theranos, Holmes is now pursuing a high-stakes, dual-front campaign to reclaim her freedom and reshape her public legacy. She is currently serving a multi-year federal prison sentence and has reportedly petitioned President Donald Trump for executive clemency to shorten her time behind bars.

Her clemency bid marks a strategic turn for a former venture whose peak valuation reached $9 billion. Theranos’s board of directors then included former Secretaries of State George Shultz and Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of Defense James Mattis, and former Senators Sam Nunn and Bill Frist.

That political and corporate prestige collapsed after investigative reports by *The Wall Street Journal* in 2015 revealed that Theranos’s proprietary “Edison” devices could not perform the vast array of blood tests Holmes had promised. The company was instead secretly running patient samples on diluted, commercially available third-party machines, producing highly inaccurate and potentially dangerous results.

The clemency request coincides with the impending wide theatrical release of *You Can See Everything*, a sprawling, three-hour documentary distributed by A24. Directed by American filmmaker Lance Oppenheim, known for stylized explorations of insular subcultures, and Canadian comedian and documentarian Nathan Fielder, the film seeks to re-examine Holmes’s rise, fall, and guilt.

*You Can See Everything* debuted as a surprise screening at the Telluride Film Festival over Labor Day weekend and is scheduled for theatrical release on October 16. The filmmakers embedded with Holmes for about a month at a beachside rental home in Del Mar, California, in the spring of 2023, shortly before she surrendered to federal custody, and continued chronicling her story over a three-year span. Throughout the project, Holmes maintains that she did not commit the crimes for which she was convicted and makes a direct public appeal for vindication.

After exhausted appeals, Holmes reported to the minimum-security Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas, on May 30, 2023. Her sentence has since been adjusted to a projected release date in late 2032, subject to federal good-behavior credits.

Balwani was tried separately in 2022, convicted on all 12 criminal charges brought against him, and sentenced to 12.9 years in prison. He is currently serving his sentence at a federal facility in San Pedro, California. Holmes and Balwani were also ordered to pay $452 million in restitution to the victims of their fraud scheme.