The top-rated comment over there: "Holmes is a sociopath who thinks she's smarter than everyone else. She conned her investors, her board and her customers, and now she's trying to con the jury."
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"[Elizabeth] Holmes became teary-eyed on the stand as she described dropping out of Stanford University, in part, because she had been raped."
"Shortly after, she said, she struck up a relationship with Balwani, who would go on to become a Theranos executive.
'He said that I was safe now that I had met him,' she said. Holmes had met Balwani the summer before starting at Stanford. She was 18, and he is about two decades older.
Balwani had a specific idea of how to make her into a good entrepreneur, Holmes testified, including her eating only certain foods that would make her 'pure' and give her energy for the company, not sleeping much and having a “very disciplined and intense lifestyle.'
When she failed to live up to his expectations, Holmes said, Balwani would yell at her and sometimes force her to have sex with him when she didn’t want to, because 'he would say to me that he wanted me to know that he still loved me.'
In Holmes’s first days testifying, she stuck to her defense that she was acting in good faith while she ran the start-up and said that she trusted staffers when they told her things were going well in the lab and with the business...."
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File under #the-kind-of-story-you-make-up-when-caught-redhanded.
Not to fear. There will be at least one social justice major in the jury that will find her not guilty.
Patriarchy and all that.
If a man had tried something like what she did Theranos never would have gotten the corporate support and favoritism.
In any competitive situation where there is a similarly qualified man and woman the woman is always picked.
Otherwise the system is sexist right?
Believe all women.
Liars gonna lie…
Holmes actions also scream Daddy Issues.
I would not doubt she was raped in college. Her entire career and story are littered with self destructive actions and people like that put themselves in those kind of situations.
The best course in nearly every situation is to tell the truth. That she did this so rarely demonstrates bad judgment on a variety of levels.
Prison would be a good place for therapy, if she is guilty of her alleged crimes, which this line of defense seems to suggest she is.
To her techno-credit, Elizabeth Holmes has shifted the standard two-dimensional "Crazy-Hot" matrix into multiple dimensions.
I have to admire the commitment to the grift.
As the saying goes, "Behind every bright, successful woman is brighter, male psychopath".
Remember, this is the gal that General Mattis hitched his wagon to and was the "payoff" to Mattis by the powers that be for dumping on Trump who opposed the Endless Wars.
If you haven't yet read about the actions Mattis took while in positions of authority in the military re: Theranos products, take a moment to familiarize yourself with them and you get a clear picture of how the establishment takes care of its own.
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2021/08/31/how-did-gen-mattis-get-sucked-into-the-theranos-web-and-our-tax-dollars-with-it/
The top-rated comment over there
Why do we bother with trials any more when people already know what happened??
Is Holmes guilty as charged or not? Hell if I know. I'm not on the jury and I've not looked at the evidence presented at trial.
Victimless crime.
She fleeced The Best and the Brightest.
Gerda Sprinchorn said...
File under #the-kind-of-story-you-make-up-when-caught-redhanded.
yep, though there is a variant at the other end of the socio-spectrum when you and your druggie pimp are found living in a mansion that has bodies (homeowners) in the basement
I was weak and controlled. he used sex, drugs and threats
I think thetexts call it either Stockholm or with this subset, Patty Hearst syndrome
So, she dropped out of Stanford because she was raped there, but stayed at Theranos for years despite being raped there?
Seems that someone needs to work harder at getting her story straight
It is noice to be informed that not all WaPo readers are idiots
How many women are on the jury?
I’m looking forward to the cross-examination of Miss Holmes. That’s where the rubber meets the road.
"Holmes is a sociopath who thinks she's smarter than everyone else. She conned her investors, her board and her customers, and now she's trying to con the jury."
The investors let themselves be conned by folding when the word "technology" was thrown at them. If she gets any jail time it will really be more about protecting the NYT, Forbes, Vanity Fair, et al; who all wanted to portray her as some sort of liberal Jesus.
Also feel compelled to say that this is a red-letter day for Feminism. You've got Holmes and Ghislaine Maxwell, both in court this week, pleading innocence and saying that bad men made them commit these terrible acts.
she described dropping out of Stanford University, in part, because she had been raped.""
"in part". What was the other part of the reason?? Is that an attempt to create wiggle room??
Let me guess.......she never pressed charges for rape.
'"[Elizabeth] Holmes became teary-eyed on the stand as she described dropping out of Stanford University, in part, because she had been raped."
"Shortly after, she said, she struck up a relationship with Balwani, who would go on to become a Theranos executive. 'He said that I was safe now that I had met him,' she said. Holmes had met Balwani the summer before starting at Stanford.'
Timeline doesn't add up.
So she dropped out of Stanford after being raped, then shortly after met Balwani, and at the same time met Balwani the summer before attending Stanford?
I agree that she is a weird one and not the smartest person in the room, but smart enough to con Schultz and Mattis...
The book 'Bad Blood' is really good btw.
"Holmes is a sociopath who thinks she's smarter than everyone else."
Nah, just a convenient #MeToo wannabe. Appropriating the narrative.
But maybe lefties can clear one thing up for us deplorables: so if we must believe all women except when we shouldn't, when is when?
If there is no smoking gun email: 'I can't believe we're getting funding for our shit tech that obviously doesn't work,' it will be tough to convict her.
How different was Theranos from any other failed startup in the Valley?
I've worked for lots of them...even for a company whose CEO did end up in jail.
But he got caught for an actual crime (booking phantom sales to inflate the stock price), not just for hyping his company...
I strongly suspect she is lying. But even if not, her alleged college assault (did she name who and when?) does not excuse her active participation in the fraud she benefited from decades later. "I wuz brainwashed" is a pretty lame defense for the pert and clever little psycho.
Wait, what? She wants to get off a securities fraud case because her sex life was, she alleges, less than perfect?
Where do I sign up for that kind of justice?
Ex-partner? Boyfriend, husband, corporation?
No empathetic appeal for #MeToo #HerToo #SheProgressed and collateral damage. That said, I wonder how any woman or man could have reasonably supported a Kamala Harris position of authority, let alone her candidacy. And Biden, too, is the man WaPo et al brayed about for the preceding 16 trimesters.
Other than her testimony in the past few days has anyone else heard that she dropped out of Stanford beachside of rape? Or anything similar?
I had not and have read the book Bad Blood and have been lis to 2weekly podcasts covering the trial a D background in depth.
She is almost a cartoon stereotype "it's not my fault. I am just a weak little girl /woman with no power over my actions. Watch me cry"
I've got $2 that says she cries on the stand at some point. Will the folks who made fun of Rittenhouse 's tears make fun of Holmes? I dou it.
John LGBTQBNY Henry
John Henry
if a man tried this argument, he'd get laughed out of court. She is the embodiment of Female Privilege.
I agree with the comment. She is a sociopath and assumed she could outwit the world. She did pretty well for a while. Now she is trying it on the jury.
Achilles is right as per usual. It's why they named Ponzi scheme after Gladis Ponzi and how Beatrice Madoff bilked billions. Let's not forget the movie about Enron: The Smartest Gals in the Room.
From the WaPo piece:
Holmes’s defense team is asking her questions that indicate she believed what she said was true — and therefore did not have the intent to defraud.
The Costanza defense.
That Indian dog who ate her homework. Or maybe it was an Indiana dog who ate her needlework.
Now that is a femme fatale.
Co-defendant #1: We didn't mean to defraud anybody, and we had no intent to deceive.
Co-defendant #2: He raped me and it's all his fault.
One fucking crook is pointing the finger at the other fucking crook.
I wonder if her new husband believes that story. Does he envision being thrown under the bus by her someday?
Women are so fucking predictable.
I'm in trouble? Don't blame me. I was raped (oh, did I forget to mention that to anyone at the time...) and therefore can't be held responsible for anything I've done.
Keep it up and no one will believe or care about rape rapes.
Ghislaine's lawyer is also pushing the female victim narrative.
The top rated comment is being overly nice about Holmes. I've watched the documentary and listened to the podcast https://abcaudio.com/podcasts/the-dropout/
The con started before Balwani entered the picture. They worked in lock-step to continue the sham. When you are talking $7 or $9 billion market cap, it's worth lying and even killing off employees, but it was always going to end in the same place.
She loved every single moment of her fame and was willing to do whatever was necessary to keep it.
She's so smart, she knows how to lie to herself that is so totally believable that ... she believes herself! Once she truly believes her own horse manure, her sincerity doesn't even have to be fake.
Bernie Madoff was an idiot. He should have just said a teacher in Hebrew School touched his butt. All would have been forgiven.
I agree that she is a weird one and not the smartest person in the room, but smart enough to con Schultz and Mattis...
----------
come on give it up : Schultz and Mattis came up in the patriarchy that thought they were smart men / partriarchs - while women can see BS when they see it.
Joe Smith said...
I agree that she is a weird one and not the smartest person in the room, but smart enough to con Schultz and Mattis...
That does not appear to be a very high bar.
See the American Elite in action. Of course we should trust them with our lives
Her mistake was going into hardware. It is impossible to lie about software.
Howard: "Achilles is right as per usual. It's why they named Ponzi scheme after Gladis Ponzi and how Beatrice Madoff bilked billions. Let's not forget the movie about Enron: The Smartest Gals in the Room."
According to Howard, Holmes is apparently innocent because......Ponzi/Madoff/Enron.
If you are having a hard time grasping the "deep" Howard "logic", consider also Howard proclaimed Rittenhouse guilty because of "state lines"!!!eleventy1!11!1!!!1!
“Bad Blood” was an excellent page-turner of a book. One thing that I never understood was how her board and her investors could fail to conduct due diligence on the technology. Her whole value proposition was based on novel microfluidics and quick reliable assays —large panels of tests at the same time, thus saving lots of money and time. “A lab on a chip.” Well, that’s the Holy Grail and has been for a while: but what made her approach so special? How did she plan to get every component blessed by the regulators and then each sub-assembly of components likewise blessed, and each combination of sub-assemblies, on and on, so she could launch the final novel complex? And achieve quality control? What were her patent applications saying? These were huge issues…and none of the people throwing money at her, or risking their reputation to sit on her board, demanded to look at how she was addressing them, what the progress was?
She probably put everybody under NDA’s but that really doesn’t answer the question. If I sign an NDA as a predicate to my getting into the intellectual property files and interviewing the engineering team, and then I find…there’s nothing there, or huge holes in the story? I was m going to walk. And my departure might be noticed. How did she hide this so well for so long?
Howard needs to read "Bad Blood." Here is where to find it. Pretty good scandal, especially all the powerful old men she conned.
It is kind of interesting bringing up Ponzi/Madoff/Enron. Ponzi and Madoff both started out with investment plans that they believed in and expected would be very successful, for themselves and their investors. They ran into a little bad luck, and "borrowed" money from new investors to pay old, just until their luck turned around. It's hard to say at what point they realized they would never get out from under. But for sure, the day did come, and after that, it was a straight-up grift, played for all it was worth.
It's not clear that Holmes ever had sufficient grasp of the game she was playing to know that it was a grift. She was surrounded by people with better scientific training than she had, who took the money and professed admiration for the Empress' new clothes. At some point she had to realize that the cash flow was bogus, new money was paying for old, but hey -- Tesla is worth more than General Motors and Ford put together, right? Right!
Something’s been nagging at me all day, ever since I read this. She says she was raped. Did she file a police report?
I once worked at a company that invested ten billion dollars in this new tech that was supposed to do amazing things. I remember them explaining what it was, and I remember thinking "How could that possibly actually work in real life?" Four years later, they wrote off the whole ten billion.
Steve Jobs used to create this thing called a "reality distortion field" by his colleagues, but Steve Jobs was kind of a genius, and he could understand that what he was asking was probably possible. I think Holmes tried to create the same "reality distortion fields," but without the genius... It's just dreams from the opium pipe.
Howard said...
Achilles is right as per usual. It's why they named Ponzi scheme after Gladis Ponzi and how Beatrice Madoff bilked billions. Let's not forget the movie about Enron: The Smartest Gals in the Room.
These situations were all exactly the same.
Exactly.
I was thinking some idiot would make the Madoff comparison when I made the post. It was entirely predictable it would be someone who thinks they are smarter than they actually are. It is like they are limited to two sentences of context and those have to be stuffed up their ass by a puppet hand media.
I do appreciate the attempt at humor though changing men's names to women's names.
Super clever.
Owen said...
“Bad Blood” was an excellent page-turner of a book. One thing that I never understood was how her board and her investors could fail to conduct due diligence on the technology.
Kissinger, Schultz, Mattis, the Waltons; don't exactly scream tech savvy to me. And apparently she'd worked her way through the usual Palo Alto tech VC's, who didn't want to deal with her because she kept saying; "It's proprietary knowledge! I can let you see my company secrets!", when they wanted to review the hardware/software.
Jupiter said...
It's not clear that Holmes ever had sufficient grasp of the game she was playing to know that it was a grift. She was surrounded by people with better scientific training than she had, who took the money and professed admiration for the Empress' new clothes.
She did not wake up one morning and say; "I know a great way to con a bunch of people!", she was a true believer in what she was doing.
At some point she had to realize that the cash flow was bogus, new money was paying for old, but hey...
It came out in the SEC hearings that Balwani got cold feet and at certain points tried to rein her in, but she kept saying; "No, I got this!".
Clarence Darrow would argue that Holmes was fated to be a conwoman: her father was an ENRON exec and her mother was a Congressional staffer.
Liz's problem: you can't be beautiful, rich, and well-educated and claim to be weak, stupid, vulnerable and misled.
Some rich, beautiful, and well-educated people are like that, but we don't make allowances for them because they've had too many advantages.
Blogger Owen said...
“Bad Blood” was an excellent page-turner of a book. One thing that I never understood was how her board and her investors could fail to conduct due diligence on the technology.
Because they were all technological idiots who couldn't have understood the technology even if it was real?
Because none of them worked in the field, so none understood the FDA issues?
That would be my guess. I never cared enough about the company to look in to it
>> It's why they named Ponzi scheme after Gladis Ponzi and how Beatrice Madoff bilked billions. Let's not forget the movie about Enron: The Smartest Gals in the Room.
Someone may have missed the "you people" trifecta, but there's still a couple of Althouse posts I need to check out.
--gpm
'One thing that I never understood was how her board and her investors could fail to conduct due diligence on the technology.'
From memory, none of the board members had any kind of medical background.
Should have been a huge red flag to investors right there...
They're not gonna send a pregnant woman to prison.
Joe Smith said...
'One thing that I never understood was how her board and her investors could fail to conduct due diligence on the technology.'
From memory, none of the board members had any kind of medical background.
Should have been a huge red flag to investors right there...
Yeah. If your memory is correct, that is a huge red flag
Due diligence with a tech start-up nervous about opening its kimono can be handled well enough by using a third party (e.g. patent law firm) to look at the files and then issue a high-level opinion on what they contain or how well the tech meets certain agreed operating tests.
If you are a tech moron —which apparently Schultz and Mattis et al. were— it is super important to get tech savvy advisers. Otherwise, you will re-enact the old saying about a fool and his money.
I hope she wins, because today's America deserves her.
To clarify, the elite establishment dumbasses who threw their money at her (hello George Schultz & Co., I'm looking at your silly mugs) don't deserve the "out" of saying, "Oh well; she's a criminal scam artist." On the contrary, let her walk so that everyone knows that these elitists are far less exceptional and certainly no "better" people than any of the rest of us.
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