Posted on 01/04/2022 5:53:18 AM PST by Red Badger
Then-Vice President Joe Biden played a key role in helping further the billion-dollar con job perpetrated by Elizabeth Holmes, lavishing the disgraced Theranos founder with praise in 2015.
Holmes, whose company falsely claimed to be able to conduct wide-ranging and revolutionary life-saving tests using only tiny drops of blood, was found guilty on Monday on one federal charge of conspiracy to defraud investors and three counts of wire fraud. She faces up to 20 years in prison per count.
Holmes, now 37, and her longtime business partner Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani were indicted in June 2018 for two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and nine counts of wire fraud. The jury for Holmes did not reach a verdict on three of the wire fraud charges and found her not guilty of a conspiracy to defraud patients and not guilty on three of the other wire fraud charges. Another count against Holmes was dropped.
Balwani's trial is scheduled to begin later this month.
Theranos touted Biden’s July 23, 2015 visit to its headquarters in a lengthy press release, calling it “A New Era of Preventive Health Care" summit. Both the company and Biden repeatedly posted on Twitter about the event.
"Information is the lifeblood of research." -VP Biden on innovation in health care today at the Theranos manufacturing facility
— VP Biden (Archived) (@VP44) July 23, 2015
“Talk about being inspired," Biden said at the time, though he turned down the chance to have his blood drawn. "This is inspiration. It is amazing to me, Elizabeth, what you’ve been able to do.”
Vice President Joe Biden participates in a roundtable discussion yesterday in the Theranos machine shop in California pic.twitter.com/qfw30XrzbN
— VP Biden (Archived) (@VP44) July 24, 2015 Biden praised Theranos for "charging historically low prices" and making its supposedly game-changing diagnostic tools available to all.
Today, we are greatly honored to welcome @VP Biden to Theranos.
— Theranos (@theranos) July 23, 2015 An audio recording showed Holmes returning the flattery.
“It is an absolute privilege and a tremendous honor to have Vice President Biden here with us,” Holmes said in her opening remarks. “He is someone I so deeply respect and am so inspired by the context of his service to our country and the bold actions he has taken in service to our country throughout his career.”
Starting soon: we’re hosting @VP Biden and industry leaders for our summit “A New Era of Preventive Health Care.” http://t.co/W1iNyaultl
— Theranos (@theranos) July 23, 2015
Theranos said Biden joined Holmes on a tour of its “laboratory and manufacturing facility, seeing Theranos’ finger stick test and innovative test system, and meeting many of the company’s employees.” Much of what he saw was a sham.
The valuation of Theranos was pegged as high as $9 billion in 2014 and, since she owned 50% of the company, her net worth was as high as $4.5 billion — at least on paper.
Our technicians receive a 4.8 out of 5 in customer satisfaction. Thanks, Tiffany. Awaiting @VP Biden. https://t.co/xjgWk22QNe
— Theranos (@theranos) July 23, 2015 Theranos’s sham unraveled publicly just a few months after Biden’s visit when an investigation by the Wall Street Journal’s John Carreyrou revealed that Theranos was misleading about its blood test technology and that the company was doing the vast majority of its tests with existing technology.
Biden's praise for Holmes and her crooked company has not aged well. In his visit, Biden talked about his own aneurysm and his late son Beau Biden's brain cancer as he praised Theranos.
.@VP Biden meets with our founder and CEO, Elizabeth Holmes, and Theranos technician, Tiffany. https://t.co/hAUo2bpigz
— Theranos (@theranos) July 23, 2015
Biden said he’d met Holmes a year prior when he’d spoken at a conference, and the Theranos founder had been sat next to him, saying, “I’ve been threatening Elizabeth for the last year that I’m going to come and see the operation and be shown around."
"You get the sense that the whole medical complex and industry is on the cusp of some fundamental change that goes far beyond what encompasses what you’re doing here,” Biden told Holmes.
“This is the laboratory of the future.” - @VP Biden today at our inaugural health summit. #ownyourhealth pic.twitter.com/TYzKWdRYg3
— Theranos (@theranos) July 23, 2015
Biden made it clear that then-President Barack Obama was supportive of Theranos too.
“You know, the president and I, as I hope we’ve demonstrated, led by the president, share your vision of a new healthcare paradigm focused on preventive care,” Biden said.
“The @POTUS and I share your vision of a health care paradigm focused on prevention." - @VP Biden #ownyourhealth pic.twitter.com/ya7eCJlKE3
— Theranos (@theranos) July 23, 2015
Theranos highlighted that Biden had supported the company regarding its dealings with the Food and Drug Administration when he said, “The fact that you’re voluntarily submitting all of your tests to the FDA demonstrates your confidence in what you’re doing.”
Biden wasn't the only high-profile person to get conned. Theranos board members included former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State George Shultz, former Defense Secretary William Perry, former Democratic Sen. Sam Nunn, former Republican Sen. Bill Frist, and former Trump Defense Secretary James Mattis.
A few days after Biden’s visit, the Obama White House’s YouTube channel posted a video of Holmes, with the description saying she spoke “about her Signature Initiative on empowering women in science, technology, mathematics and business.”
Holmes had been invited to a White House state dinner honoring Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in April 2015, with the event attended by the Obamas, the Bidens, and others.
Obama named Holmes a “Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship” in May 2015 and honored her and eight other new fellow PAGE honorees at a “Global Entrepreneurship” event on May 11.
The Theranos founder was a staunch ally of the Clinton family as well, appearing at multiple Clinton Foundation events onstage with former President Bill Clinton and campaigning with Chelsea Clinton at a March 2016 fundraiser.
Looking for 10%?
Birds of a Feather.
To be fair, Holmes also made a believer out of George Schultz. She was an equal-opportunity deceiver.
The question, which I'm sure WASN'T asked: "How much did 'The Big Guy' make from his endorsement?"
She has a ‘thing’ for old guys..............................
Will Holmes finally abandon her fake deep voice when she goes to prison?
“Will Holmes finally abandon her fake deep voice when she goes to prison?”
I wonder if she did a deep, normal, or damsel in distress voice when she was on the stand. Also, no word on if she immediately went to jail.
“Will Holmes finally abandon her fake deep voice when she goes to prison?”
I wonder if she did a deep, normal, or damsel in distress voice when she was on the stand. Also, no word on if she immediately went to jail.
She’s a sociopath that needs to be locked up for a long time. Whipping her would be a nice touch.
I’m betting she gets a Country Club Prison complete with spa and tennis courts.
She had a thing for money!
I can believe that Biden and Obama were conned. However, the Clinton’s(the ultimate Grifters) were probably not fooled.
It is hard to con a con man.
Elizabeth is very smart. People wanted to believe that she was the new face of high tech. It fits their narrative that a woman breaks through the glass ceiling of silicon valley.
I never understood her endgame. If she was just a fraudster, why didn’t she have an escape plan? She should have disappeared like D.B. Cooper.
Just think, with all that money she conned out of the corporate investors, HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS, they could have actually developed the blood testing machines that they claimed they had....................
Where the vultures gather is where the carrion lies.................
Was this a federal charge?
If so, she will probably end up at Danbury, CT.
That is where they send most women that are NON violent offenders. Primarily, women caught in first time drug charges.
Even at places like The Big House in Lewisburg, PA they have non violent offenders living outside the wall in what I thought looked very similar to my college dorm. There were tennis courts right next door to them to. Also, a ball diamond. Check it out on google earth.
The person I knew that worked there told me: “Don’t worry we keep the dangerous ones behind the wall”. I replied “what keeps them from running away?. He replied “they all wear GPS ankle monitors. If they do anything wrong, they go inside the wall and they don’t want that.”
No, not at all. I don’t think that it’s possible to do what she claimed to do—to run hundreds of tests on a single droplet of blood. There’s simply not enough of a sample to make that happen with any sort of technology we know.
Genesis 11:6
The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.........
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