For a while, it seemed Elizabeth Holmes was everywhere.
Peering wide-eyed and black-turtlenecked from a support load of mag covers. Honored arsenic a "Woman of the Year" by Glamour. Touted arsenic 1 of Time's "100 Most Influential People."
At property 30, Holmes was regarded arsenic a preternatural business talent -- and, much impressively, described arsenic the youngest self-made female billionaire successful history -- owing to her founding and stewardship of Theranos, a Silicon Valley start-up that promised to revolutionize healthcare by diagnosing a big of maladies pinch conscionable a pinprick's worthy of blood.
It was all a large con job.
Her aesculapian claims were a sham. Theranos' exertion was bogus. Even the husky TED-talking sound Holmes utilized to put herself pinch 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 assemblage convicted Holmes connected 4 counts of fraud and conspiracy. At property 37, she became a lawsuit study successful gullibility and greed. Months later, Holmes -- by past a mother of 2 -- was sentenced to 11 years and 3 months successful prison. She began serving her word in May 2023, astatine a women's situation campy extracurricular 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.
Of each the powers a president wields, fewer lucifer his awesome pardon authority.
It is sweeping and life-changing. Idiosyncratic, resting wholly connected individual whim, and irrevocable. Once granted, it is intolerable to reverse.
The powerfulness to pardon is also, for illustration immoderate assistance of authority, subject to mismanagement and abuse.
Just about each president "has issued his stock of arguable pardons and much than that, perhaps, pardons that conscionable were successful unspeakable taste, that violated each consciousness of logic and propriety," said Larry Gerston, a San José State governmental subject professor emeritus and longtime student of Silicon Valley.
Excess being Trump's signature, the president has, existent to form, taken his pardon powerfulness to indecent and unholy extremes.
As soon arsenic he settled backmost into the Oval Office, Trump pardoned much than 1,500 criminal defendants tied to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack connected the U.S. Capitol, including some who hit and pepper-sprayed rule enforcement officers.
Other malefactors he's fto disconnected the hook see Changpeng Zhao, the money-laundering erstwhile CEO of Binance, which has ties to the Trump family's cryptocurrency business; disgraced former congressman and embezzler George Santos; and Illinois' politically corrupt erstwhile governor, Rod Blagojevich.
Just past week, Trump pardoned erstwhile Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, a convicted supplier trafficker who, according to prosecutors, "paved a cocaine superhighway" to the United States. This astatine the aforesaid clip the U.S. subject ramps up its beingness successful Latin America and blows boats retired of the Caribbean successful a professed conflict against supplier smuggling successful the region.
If you could quadrate those actions pinch Hernández's pardon and not propulsion your backmost retired successful the process you're either much pliable than about aliases willfully obtuse.
Or effort reconciling Trump's expected tough-on-crime stance pinch his pardon of crypto cult leader Ross Ulbricht.
Ulbricht, whom a judge described arsenic "the kingpin of a worldwide integer drug-trafficking enterprise," was sentenced successful 2015 to life successful prison for moving Silk Road, a acheronian web marketplace wherever criminals utilized Bitcoin to behaviour hundreds of millions of dollars successful illicit trade.
Acting from down bars, pinch thief from family and supporters, Ulbricht mounted a societal media run clamoring for his release. Among those who took statement was Trump, who championed Ulbricht's origin during the 2024 run arsenic a measurement to woo libertarian-minded voters. A time aft his inauguration, the president granted Ulbricht a full, unconditional pardon.
Apparently, Holmes besides took note.
From her minimum information lockup, she's begun mounting her ain societal media blitz successful an evident effort to triumph Trump's favour and get sprung from situation and freed from accountability for her epic swindle.
Holmes cannot entree the net aliases societal media, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons told the San Jose Mercury News. So her postings, she explains connected X, are "mostly my words, posted by others." (Her curriculum vitae reads: "Building a amended world for my 2 children. Inventor. Founder and erstwhile CEO @Theranos." Somewhere Thomas Edison is blushing.)
Holmes' provender is simply a babbling watercourse of self-help epigrams, ankle-deep reflections and many, galore photos of herself. "I gave my life to fighting for our basal quality correct to wellness information," says the would-be Joan of Arc.
Of course, location is besides plentifulness of Trump flattery on pinch paeans to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his cockamamie make-America-sick-again agenda, arsenic 1 aesculapian charlatan nods to another.
Nowhere does Holmes connection the slightest look of guilt aliases remorse for her sizeable ill-gotten gains. At 1 point, she moreover likens herself to a Holocaust survivor, displaying some staggeringly mediocre sensation and utter cluelessness.
All of which makes Holmes an perfect campaigner for a pardon from Trump, who's turned self-dealing and victimization into an creation form. Maybe if Holmes is freed from jailhouse she could find a occupation location successful his administration.