The court played the recordings for the jurors Thursday, including one in which Holmes discussed Theranos’s work with pharmaceutical companies and with the military.
“Several years ago we realized that we had created an infrastructure that could in fact make it possible to get rid of phlebotomy, or the big tubes of blood that are drawn from the arm, in its entirety,” she said during the call.
Theranos had early partnerships with pharmaceutical companies, it was revealed during the trial, but its technology was never used on military battlegrounds or in military helicopters despite years of the company trying to make inroads. Theranos marketed its technology as being able to run hundreds of tests from a finger-prick of blood, but former employees said that it still relied on traditional blood draws from a patient’s arm for many tests.
Theranos’s representation of its work with the military is a key allegation in the prosecution’s case. Holmes said during her testimony on the stand that she did not claim the company’s devices were being used in military helicopters, saying she was “trying to convey” that the company was working on making a device ready for medevac use.
But multiple investors had previously testified that Theranos told them the devices were being used in the military aircraft.
“We’ve built the business around partnerships with pharmaceutical companies and our contracts with the military wherein we could deploy our framework in the [one case] for helping accelerate clinical trials and in the other for extreme-use-case situations in trauma and other areas where there was a very compelling value proposition in order to build out our test menu and our infrastructure to be able to get to this point,” Holmes said in the recording.
The jury appeared to be listening intently to the recordings Thursday, with several taking notes and at least one craning his neck to better hear.
Holmes sat stick-straight, her usual stance during the trial, blinking rapidly, her gaze fixed in the same direction during the session, as jurors scribbled notes. In the hallway afterward, she appeared more relaxed, smiling with her mom and her partner as they walked toward an elevator.
Holmes, the founder of defunct blood-testing start-up Theranos, is facing 11 counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Her trial began in September and stretched more than three months as prosecutors tried to prove allegations that she misled investors and patients about the company’s technology.
Parts of the call played in court Thursday included questions from Holmes’s investors about changes in the value of their shares, the company’s market cap, additional financing for Theranos, and Holmes’s control over the company.
“She has a firm grasp on the company,” one person said on the call. “Let there be no mistake both in how she leads it and then legally and contractually.”
Prosecutors had pushed Holmes during the trial to admit that as CEO and founder she was in charge and responsible for Theranos.
Holmes, who has pleaded not guilty, defended herself on the stand over the course of seven days. She argued that she acted in good faith and did not intentionally mislead her partners or customers.
The jury of eight men and four women previously asked the court on Tuesday if it could take home the 39-page jury instructions to review. The judge said no.
Theranos and Holmes were once seen as successful examples of Silicon Valley ingenuity, as the company claimed it could run hundreds of blood tests from just a few drops of blood drawn from a patient’s fingertip. But the company came crashing down after media and regulatory investigations, which showed that the Theranos technology was more limited than the company had let on.
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