After conviction, what’s next for Elizabeth Holmes?
(NewsNation Now) — She’s been found guilty on four of 11 charges, one of conspiracy and three of wire fraud, but that’s not the end of the story for Elizabeth Holmes. It took the jury a week to come to the verdicts, and the jury members remained deadlocked on three of the charges related to defrauding investors and found her not guilty of four charges related to defrauding patients.
Litigator Andrew George joined “Morning in America” Tuesday to discuss the trial, and began by saying that, “As a practical matter, this is a complete win for the government. The government will be able to get virtually the same sentence against her as it would have if it would also have gotten her convicted on the investor charges.”
George broke down the case, saying that what the verdicts showed was that Holmes did believe in her her product and its effectiveness. “She did think that she was doing something real here, and she wanted her company to succeed.”
“The trouble,” he said, “came in what she did to convince her investors to support her. She told them things that just weren’t true.” He pointed to claims about deployment of the technology with the military that were untrue. She also put the logos of Pfizer and other companies on communications to investors, making it seem as if those companies were in partnership with Theranos.
As for what comes next, George says the judge will declare a mistrial on the three charges on which the jury was unable to reach a verdict. The government could choose to retry her on those charges, but it won’t because, “There’s no point. She’s already been convicted of enough charges to get a full sentence against her.”
As far as sentencing, George predicts a sentence of at least 210 months given the financial impact of the fraud of which Holmes was convicted. He said that will likely be the recommendation. Given Holmes’ otherwise clean record, the judge could decide to sentence her to less, but it will still be “a significant sentence.”