In her first day facing questions from the prosecution, Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes admitted that she tried to get News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch to kill a story that the Wall Street Journal was preparing to publish about her company in 2015.
“You personally went to the owner of the Wall Street Journal to try to quash the story,” Robert Leach, an assistant U.S. attorney, asked of Holmes.
“I did,” Holmes replied.
The article from the Journal’s John Carreyrou, who’s no longer with the paper, was finally published on Oct. 15, 2015, and opened the investigative floodgates that eventually led to Theranos’ demise in 2018 and the indictment of Holmes on criminal fraud charges.
Holmes faces 11 counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud for her role at the blood-testing company, and could spend up to 20 years in prison if convicted. She pleaded not guilty.
Holmes acknowledged that she was “very worried” about the Journal’s story.
Carreyrou, who attended the trial this week, left the Journal in 2019, a year after publishing his book on Theranos, “Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup.” Carreyrou told CNBC on Tuesday, “I stand by every line of what I wrote.”
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