Ex-WSJ reporter Carreyrou willing to testify at Theranos trial

Former Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou is on the potential witness list and is willing to testify at the criminal case against Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, reports Brian Baxter of Bloomberg Law.

Baxter reports, “Carreyrou, whose October 2015 report in the Wall Street Journal cast doubts about the efficacy of Theranos’ technology, locked horns with the company’s lawyers at Boies Schiller Flexner. Heather King, a former Theranos legal chief who eventually returned to Boies Schiller, sent the Journal retraction demands, he said.

“‘There was an incredibly aggressive, scorched-earth legal campaign, as I called it in my book, to threaten and intimidate me to get this story killed,’ said Carreyrou, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner. ‘I would be a very good witness for the prosecution and a terrible one for the defense.’

“Carreyrou and journalist Roger Parloff are on the extensive list of potential witnesses in the criminal case against Holmes, which starts Tuesday with jury selection in a federal district court in San Jose, Calif. It’s not clear whether either reporter will actually be called to testify.

“By the time Carreyrou’s book on Theranos was published in May 2018, what was left of the company would soon dissolve. Carreyrou and Parloff are among several high-profile potential witnesses, including former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and famed litigator and Boies Schiller co-founder David Boies, who could take the stand in Holmes’ criminal fraud trial.”

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