“Both sides made closing arguments this week in Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes’ fraud trial,” reports Business Insider:
Prosecutors said Holmes “chose to be dishonest” and that her allegations of abuse, which were a key part of her defense, were irrelevant. The defense said “rats flee a sinking ship” but Holmes stayed, noting “that’s who that woman is….”
Prosecutors kicked off their arguments by recapping testimony from each of their 29 witnesses. They argued that Holmes saw money dry up at Theranos while its progress languished and had to decide whether to “watch Theranos slowly fail” or defraud investors and patients. “She chose fraud over business failure. She chose to be dishonest,” said Assistant US attorney Jeffrey Schenk, according to NBC News. “That choice was not only callous, it was criminal.”
Prosecutors revisited Holmes’ bombshell admissions during her seven days of testimony, including that she added pharmaceutical companies’ logos to validation reports without authorization and kept Theranos’ use of modified third-party devices a secret. Holmes has said she wanted to convey that the reports were the result of work done with those pharmaceutical companies and that she withheld information about the use of commercial devices because it was a trade secret.
The New York Times argues historians will see the trial as “a case study in the use of clothing to affect opinion (public and judicial) and, if not to make friends, at least to influence people. Or try to.”
When the verdict comes down, the transformation of the wunderkind founder of Theranos from black-clad genius to besuited milquetoast will be an integral part of the story. Did it work, or was it a seemingly transparent effort to play the relatable card? Rarely has there been as stark an example of Before and After…. Gone were her signature black turtlenecks and black slacks; gone the bright red lipstick and blond hair ironed straight as a board or pulled into a chignon…. Instead there was … sartorial neutrality, in the form of a light gray pantsuit and light blue button-down shirt, worn untucked, with baby pink lipstick. She looked more like the college student trying on a grown-up interview look than the mastermind of a multimillion-dollar fraud scheme…. There was not a power heel or a power shoulder in sight. The only part of her outfit that was branded in any way was her diaper bag backpack (her son was born in July), which was from Freshly Picked and costs around $175…
The net effect of Ms. Holmes’s makeover was middle manager or backup secretarial character in a streaming series about masters of the universe (but not her! uh-uh), with the diaper bag functioning as an implicit reminder of her maternal status and family values. In case that accessory wasn’t enough, she often entered the courthouse with an actual family member — her mother, her partner — in tow, and a hand to cling to. It was code-switching of the most skillful kind. It was relatable. One of the stereotypes of Silicon Valley’s superstars, after all, is that they are other: speaking in bits, relating to machines more than people; living, literally, in a different reality. When you want a jury to sympathize with your plight, you have to make them imagine themselves in your shoes. Which means, you need to look, if not like them, at least like someone they might know.
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