President Donald Trump has been on a clemency kick. Throughout his first yr again in workplace, he granted clemency to about 1,600 individuals—greater than six occasions as many individuals as he did throughout his first time period—largely for involvement within the Jan. 6, 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol. He additionally has granted clemency to dozens of individuals convicted of economic crimes, together with pardoning the previous CEO of the crypto change Binance Changpeng Zhao and commuting the sentence of former Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.)
Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced founding father of Theranos, is the newest particular person convicted of prison fraud to ask for Trump to commute her sentence (reduce her punishment), in keeping with a request filed in 2025 to the Division of Justice.
Holmes skilled a meteoric rise within the early 2010s with the preliminary success of her firm Theranos, which claimed its medical gadget might detect illnesses from a couple of drops of blood at a fraction of the worth. The corporate raised virtually $1 billion from traders resembling Larry Ellison, Betsy Devos, and Rupert Murdoch, and former Secretaries of State George Shultz and Henry Kissinger sat on the board of administrators.
However in 2015, Holmes was uncovered for deceptive traders and misrepresenting the efficacy of Theranos’ expertise after a collection of articles in The Wall Avenue Journal.
She started serving an 11-year sentence in Might 2023 at a minimum-security federal jail in Texas after being convicted of defrauding the traders of her blood testing firm. Her sentence was lowered to 9 years for good conduct.
Supporters, who embody enterprise capitalist Tim Draper and Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.), have criticized the heavy scrutiny of Holmes, particularly within the gentle of Silicon Valley’s “fake it till you make it” tradition.
In February 2025, Holmes misplaced a bid in a federal appeals court docket to overturn her conviction. Now, the 41-year-old nonetheless has practically six years left in her sentence, however maintains that she is harmless. Holmes has two youngsters born in 2021 and 2023 along with her companion Billy Evans, who reportedly raised thousands and thousands for a brand new diagnostic startup known as Haemanthus, though they declare they’re not “Theranos 2.0.”
“We are continuing to fight for my innocence and we know the truth can not be repressed forever. This is not over,” Holmes wrote in a submit on X on Wednesday. “The fight against weaponization of our justice system is just beginning,” she added, echoing a typical Trump administration chorus that the Biden administration used the federal authorities to prosecute political opponents.
It seems Holmes is dictating posts from Federal Jail Camp Bryan: “Mostly my words, posted by others,” in keeping with her X bio.
Holmes has just lately supported a number of of the Trump administration’s insurance policies and backed present and former administration officers resembling Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy on social media. On Jan. 15, she posted a video of Trump talking about his plan to drive hospitals and insurers that settle for Medicaid or Medicare to submit costs for medical therapies.
“Theranos did this in 2016, 10 years later it’s time we do it everywhere,” she wrote.
This can be a notable change from Holmes’ previous help for Democratic candidates. In 2016, Theranos deliberate to host a fundraiser for then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton earlier than the occasion was moved to a unique location after WSJ’s investigation exposing Theranos’ expertise.
An legal professional for Holmes didn’t instantly reply to Fortune’s request for remark.
Holmes’ potential commutation would comply with the development of the president’s current clemency towards these convicted of white-collar crimes.
In October, Trump pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, founding father of the world’s largest crypto change, who pleaded responsible to failing to take care of an efficient anti-money-laundering regime and served 4 months in jail in 2024.
Binance launched a $800,000 lobbying marketing campaign for Zhao’s pardon and U.S. coverage modifications, The Wall Avenue Journal reported. WSJ beforehand reported the corporate assisted within the constructing of the Trump household’s crypto platform World Liberty Monetary’s stablecoin, WSD1, which was later listed on Binance.
The White Home doesn’t touch upon potential clemency requests, however the president is the final word decider on pardons and commutations.
About half of Trump’s pardon recipients throughout his second time period (excluding Jan. 6 defendants) are both enterprise executives or politicians, and greater than half of the 88 particular person pardons had been for white-collar offenses, in keeping with an evaluation by NBC. Cash laundering, financial institution fraud, and wire fraud had been among the many most frequent crimes the president pardoned.
The clemency course of can take years because the request works its approach by way of the Division of Justice, and Trump has not but commented on Holmes’ software.
