President Donald Trump has been seeking clemency. In his first year back in office, he pardoned about 1,600 people — more than six times the number pardoned during his first term — most of whom were involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. He also granted clemency to dozens of people convicted of financial crimes, including pardoning the former Changpeng Zhao, CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Binance and commutation Former Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.)
Elizabeth Holmes disgraced theranos founderis the latest person convicted of fraud The request, filed in 2025 with the Justice Department, asked Trump to commute his sentence (reduce the punishment).
Holmes experienced a meteoric rise in the early 2010s with the initial success of her company Theranos, which claimed its medical device could detect disease from a few drops of blood for a fraction of the price. The company has raised nearly $1 billion from investors including Larry Ellison, Betsy DeVos and Rupert Murdoch, and former secretaries of state George Shultz and Henry Kissinger are also on its board.
But in 2015, Holmes was exposed as misleading investors and misrepresenting the efficacy of Theranos technology after publishing a series of articles. Wall Street Journal.
she Begins to serve 11 years in prison She was convicted in May 2023 of defrauding investors in a blood-testing company and is in a minimum-security federal prison in Texas. Her sentence was reduced to nine years for good behavior.
Backers, including venture capitalist Tim Draper and Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) criticized the intense scrutiny of Holmes, especially given Silicon Valley’s “Fake it ‘til you make it” culture.
February 2025, Holmes lost Apply to a federal appeals court to overturn her conviction. Now, the 41-year-old woman has nearly six years left in prison but insists she is innocent. Holmes and her partner have two children, born in 2021 and 2023 billy evansHe reportedly raised millions for a new diagnostics startup called Haemanthus, although they claim they are not “Theranos 2.0.”
“We will continue to fight for my innocence and we know the truth cannot forever be suppressed. This is not over yet,” Holmes wrote in a post X Wednesday. “The fight against the weaponization of our justice system has only just begun,” she added. echo A common refrain from the Trump administration is that the Biden administration is using the federal government to prosecute political opponents.
Holmes appears to be dictating posts from the Blaine federal prison camp: “mostly my words, posted by others,” according to her X bio.
Holmes has recently endorsed a number of Trump administration policies and endorsed current and former administration officials such as Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy on social media. On January 15, she release Video of Trump talking about his plan to force hospitals and insurance companies that accept Medicaid or Medicare to release medical costs.
“Theranos did it in 2016, and 10 years later it’s time for us to do it everywhere,” she wrote.
It’s a notable shift from Holmes’ past support for Democratic candidates. 2016, Theranos plan Hosted a fundraiser for then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton before the event was moved to another location wall street journal Investigation reveals Theranos technology.
Holmes’ attorney did not immediately respond. of wealth Request to comment.
Holmes’ potential commutation would follow the president’s recent trend of leniency toward white-collar crime offenders.
October, Trump pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, the founder of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, pleaded guilty to failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering system and was jailed for four months in 2024.
when ask Trump tells why he pardoned Zhao cbs newsNorah O’Donnell: “I don’t know who he is.” I know he got a four-month sentence or something like that. I heard this is a witch hunt against Biden. ”
Binance launches an $800,000 lobbying campaign to pardon Zhao Ziyang and change U.S. policy, wall street journal report. wall street journal It was previously reported that the company helped establish the Trump family’s cryptocurrency platform World Liberty Financial’s stablecoin WSD1 was later listed on Binance.
The White House does not comment on potential clemency requests, but the president is the final decider on pardons and commutations.
About half of the pardons issued during Trump’s second term (excluding the Jan. 6 defendants) were for business executives or politicians, and more than half of the 88 individual pardons were for white-collar crimes. analyze go through nbc. Money laundering, bank fraud and wire fraud are the most common crimes pardoned by the president.
Trump has yet to comment on Holmes’ application, as the clemency process can take years as requests go through the Justice Department.