Commentary: She's a liar, swindler and cheat. So why wouldn't Trump pardon her?
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For a while, it seemed Elizabeth Holmes was everywhere.Peering wide-eyed and black-turtlenecked from a shelf load of magazine covers.
Honored as a “Woman of the Year” by Glamour.Touted as one of Time’s “100 Most Influential People.” At age 30, Holmes was regarded as a preternatural business talent — and, more impressively, described as the youngest self-made female billionaire in history — owing to her founding and stewardship of Theranos, a Silicon Valley start-up that promised to revolutionize healthcare by diagnosing a host of maladies with just a pinprick’s worth of blood.It was all a big con job.Her medical claims were a sham.
Theranos’ technology was bogus.Even the husky TED-talking voice Holmes used to invest herself with greater seriousness and authority was a put-on.
(The turtlenecks were an austere affectation she cribbed from Steve Jobs.)In January 2022, a San Jose jury convicted Holmes on four counts of fraud and conspiracy.At age 37, she became a case study in gullibility and greed.
Months later, Holmes — by then a mother of two — was sentenced to 11 years and three months in prison.She began serving her term in May 2023, at a women’s prison camp outside Houston.Now, Holmes — who spawned a best-selling book, podcasts, a documentary, a TV miniseries and, not incidentally, stole hundreds of millions of dollars from investors — is lobbying for a pardon from President Trump.And why not? Game knows game.
Grift knows grift.Actions that once seemed untoward or shocking are no longer politically disqualifying.The instinct for embattled candidates now is to fight and not surrender.
It’s certainly worked for Trump.Of all the powers a president wields, few match his awesome pardon authority.It is sweeping and life-changing.Idiosyncratic, resting wholly on personal whim, and irrevocable.
Once granted, it is impossible to reverse.The power to p...