Theranos Whistleblower Says Nathan Fielder’s Elizabeth Holmes Documentary Got Some Things Wrong
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NEED TO KNOW
- Tyler Shultz said that the Elizabeth Holmes he once knew had “confidence” and “commanded a room”
- He described the version of Holmes he saw in the new meta-documentary You Can See Everything as “broken”
- Shultz, appearing on CBS Mornings, said Holmes’ claim in the documentary that she never lied is a well-documented lie
One of the key figures in exposing Elizabeth Holmes and the deception behind Theranos is sharing his thoughts on the new documentary You Can See Everything.
Theranos whistleblower Tyler Shultz said that the Holmes he saw on screen in that meta-documentary was “unrecognizable” in an interview with CBS Mornings.
The Holmes he knew had “confidence” and “completely commanded a room even if that room was full of secretaries of state, secretaries of defense, generals, senators,” Shultz said, referencing the members of Holmes’ board of directors.
“The woman I saw on screen looked, frankly, like a broken woman,” he added.
Shultz also said Holmes’ claim that she never lied is, well, a lie.
Holmes created a “whole web of lies,” Shultz said, pointing to findings by the Securities and Exchange Commission that she had told prospective investors Theranos generated $100 million in annual revenue when the actual figure was just $100,000. According to Shultz, Holmes also refused to provide those investors with audited financial statements.
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Shultz was brought on as an intern at Theranos in 2013, two years after his grandfather — former Secretary of State George Shultz — joined the company’s board of directors.
He applied for that internship following his junior year at Stanford University after meeting Holmes at his grandfather’s house.
He was soon offered a full-time position as a research engineer and began to notice issues with the company’s proprietary technology.
Shultz voiced his concerns to Holmes, and then left the company in April 2014 after her then-partner and Theranos COO Sunny Balwani responded to his concerns by attacking him in an email.
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He would go on to contact regulators about the flaws in Theranos’ technology and be a key force in the 2015 Wall Street Journal exposé of Theranos and Holmes that marked the beginning of the end for the startup that once had a value of $9 billion.
Shultz has also spoken in the past about the retaliation campaign Theranos launched to try and keep him quiet, but despite all that he still has sympathy for Holmes.
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He told Gayle King that seeing Holmes with her two children made it “very painful watching her leave them and go to prison.”
But Shultz believes Holmes is still trying to manipulate how people perceive her.
“I think that was the goal that Elizabeth had, was for you to come away from the movie with you having sympathy for her,” Shultz said.
“And it’s tough to not have sympathy for her, actually, when you watch the movie.”
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