(SAN JOSE, Calif.) — Federal prosecutors have rested their nearly 11-week case against Elizabeth Holmes, the former Theranos CEO accused of misleading investors to bankroll her one-time multibillion-dollar Silicon Valley start-up despite no evidence its blood-testing technology could perform as promised.
“The United States rests,” Prosecutor Jeff Schenk told the court Friday morning.
Holmes’ defense team is expected to call witnesses before the case goes to the jury. She was charged with 10 counts of wire fraud — one of which was dropped — and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
The 37-year-old faces decades in prison if convicted. She has pleaded not guilty to all charges related to Theranos, which received hundreds of millions of dollars from investors by claiming its breakthrough technology could quickly diagnose a variety of diseases from a few drops of human blood.
The government called 29 witnesses to the stand, starting in early September, including former U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis, a former Theranos board member who said he was in the dark about the technology’s shortcomings.
Prosecutors also questioned investors, including white-shoe lawyer Dan Mosley, whose long-time client Henry Kissinger was on the Theranos board and introduced him to Holmes. Mosley personally invested $6 million and put Holmes in touch with many of his wealthy clients, such as the Waltons, the family behind Walmart; the Coxes, the billionaires behind Cox Enterprises; and the DeVoses, the Amway heirs and family of former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos.
Jurors also heard from former Theranos employees who gave insight into the company’s labs and other dealings, and patients who described receiving purportedly inaccurate Theranos test results after getting blood drawn at various Walgreens locations.
Prosecutors concluded their case with testimony from journalist Roger Parloff, who wrote a 2014 cover story on the ascending Silicon Valley CEO for Fortune Magazine.
ABC News spoke to Parloff for “The Dropout” podcast in 2019.
“I got caught up in this woman’s story,” Parloff told ABC News at the time. “I began to drink the Kool-Aid. … I think I asked the right questions. I just got the wrong answers.”
The reporter recorded around 10 hours of interviews with Holmes, excerpts of which the government played in court on Thursday.
Santa Clara Law Professor Ellen Kreitzberg, who has sat through much of the trial, said the government likely ended with Parloff because his article was seen by many of the investors, and the jury got to hear the statements Holmes made to him in her own voice.
“That can be very powerful,” Kreitzberg said.
It’s unclear whether Holmes will testify. Kreitzberg said the defense likely will think “long and hard” before offering her up as a witness.
“From a lawyer’s perspective, I just can’t imagine that they want to put her on the stand,” she told ABC News. “There are too many questions and documents that are not easily explained.”
ABC News’ Victoria Thompson and Taylor Dunn contributed to this report.
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