Elizabeth Holmes Suddenly Starts Tweeting Again... While in Prison

Convicted fraudster Elizabeth Holmes is still in prison — but she's back online, in the weirdest way imaginable.

As it stands, the former CEO of the infamous healthtech startup Theranos is currently serving out an 11-year prison sentence at a minimum security prison in Texas. As a quick recap, Holmes claimed that her company had invented a medical testing device, called Edison, that could detect a wide range of illnesses — diabetes, cancers, and more  — with just a few pinpricks of blood. These claims were nothing short of fantastical, according to experts, and absolutely not based in reality: the Edison machine didn't actually work, and wrought havoc in the lives of patients who received misdiagnoses.

Even so, Theranos raked in billions of dollars in funding, drawing investments from the likes of Fox News patriarch Rupert Murdoch and the Walton family; high-profile figures including Henry Kissinger sat on the firm's board. After a long period of drama, the company fell apart, and Holmes was accused in court of swindling investors while lying about the tech's prowess. She was found guilty in 2022 of four counts of fraud, which she recently tried to appeal without success.

And yet! On Tuesday, Holmes took to X-formerly-Twitter for the first time since 2015 — the year Theranos, and her life, unraveled in public view — to share a quote about, uh, justice, from the legendary Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.

The convicted scammer included a pullout from the quote in the image's caption, writing: "The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice."

Assuming the post is actually by Holmes or someone representing her — and that her account hasn't just been hacked — it's a remarkable thing to behold.

After all, Holmes' fabrications didn't just mean that a handful of some of the wealthiest people on Earth lost some money; real, everyday people had to deal with the trauma of Theranos tests falsely diagnosing them with conditions including HIV and cancer, while others were incorrectly told they'd miscarried, or had developed a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy.

One man was put at risk when a Theranos test told him his blood wasn't clotting correctly, causing his physician to make significant adjustments to his medical regimen. All the while, Holmes and fellow former Theranos executive Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, the CEO's then-boyfriend who's also serving a lengthy prison sentence related to the scammy startup, worked to quell internal company dissent.

And now, ten years after Theranos crumbled into pieces, Holmes is back to... what? Compare herself to Martin Luther King? Insinuate that she's been dealt a great injustice, after not only being convicted on multiple accounts of fraud, but failing to reverse said convictions? It's completely absurd! Put it in the posting Hall of Fame for absolutely deranged ways to be on the internet.

(Never one to rest on her laurels, Holmes followed the MLK post up with an idiosyncratic book recommendation and another quote, this one by the boxer Muhammad Ali. She also shared a post from the anti-death and pro-penis-tracking businessman Bryan Johnson about — what else? — health, and, yes, another quote, this one from Archbishop Desmond Tutu.)

That said, in a way, we do understand why Holmes might think she's been treated unjustly. Silicon Valley is a world where exaggeration and promise-selling can reap significant rewards; people and companies are made by moving fast and breaking things, and faking it till you make it. Through that lens, it could be argued that she was just following along in an industry that often looks past a technology's present harms, limitations, and safety pitfalls for the sake of an imagined utopian future.

But while Holmes, out of legal appeals, might continue to argue that she was simply an optimistic believer in something she thought would do real good in the world, the courts say differently. And either way, whatever rules she thought she was playing by, she was employing unjust means to chase completely unreal ends. The arc of the moral universe is long indeed, Liz.

More on Elizabeth Holmes: We're Losing It at Elizabeth Holmes' Excuse for Why Theranos Results Made No Sense