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Disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes still has six years and nine months left in her prison sentence, but she’s found a way to break out early—online.
Holmes rebooted her dormant X account in late August with a post featuring a quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. In the past week, she has tweeted 10-20 times per day, including retweets and posts that tag others, like Bryan Johnson, the billionaire trying to escape death.
“Just learned that our ‘scrambled eggs’ in prison are boiled in plastic bags,” Holmes wrote to Johnson. “How bad is this? Assuming significant PFAs and microplastics are leaching into this ‘food.’ Trying my best to preserve my mind. Looks like eggs are off my menu now.”
Holmes arrives at Bryan Federal Prison Camp in 2023. (Credit: Bloomberg / Contributor / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Personal devices are not allowed inside Texas’ Bryan Federal Prison Camp, the minimum-security prison where Holmes has been since May 2023 after being convicted of fraud. Her X bio notes that tweets are “mostly my words, posted by others.” So, Holmes is likely dictating tweets to someone else, who then posts them online, though the word “mostly” suggests her helper might have some freedom to post as Elizabeth.
Appealing to Trump?
Dictating social media posts is the tactic Ross Ulbricht, founder of dark web marketplace Silk Road, used in 2018 while serving a life sentence for his role as the so-called “kingpin of a worldwide digital drug-trafficking enterprise.” He rallied supporters via social media, where he pushed a petition for his release. In January 2025, President Trump pardoned him.
“Let it be known Donald Trump is a man of his word,” Ulbricht tweeted after his release.
Members of the Libertarian Party demand Ulbricht’s release in May 2024. (Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
More recently, Trump pardoned another disgraced tech CEO, Changpeng Zhao, founder of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, which “turned a blind eye to its legal obligations in the pursuit of profit, [allowing] money to flow to terrorists, cybercriminals, and child abusers through its platform,” former Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in late 2023 after Zhao pleaded guilty.
However, Trump has repeatedly claimed ignorance of Zhao’s crimes. “I don’t know who he is,” he said in a recent 60 Minutes interview. “I know he got a four-month sentence or something like that. And I heard it was a Biden witch hunt.”
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Trump waved away a question about conflicts of interest, given his sons’ involvement in the crypto business via World Liberty Financial. “My sons are involved in crypto much more than I [am]. I know very little about it, other than one thing. It’s a huge industry. And if we’re not going to be the head of it, China, Japan, or someplace else is. So I am behind it 100%.”
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Holmes could be taking a page out of Ulbricht’s book to curry favor with the Trump administration. Her sentence has already been reduced slightly, possibly for good behavior, but not significantly. She’s currently scheduled to be released on Aug. 16, 2032, CNN reported last year.
Holmes isn’t openly lobbying for a pardon, but she did mention President Trump in a tweet yesterday, posting, “Our healthcare system is fundamentally broken when we need help from POTUS to get treatment.” She’s referring to a man who claims Trump helped him access treatment for prostate cancer. “He needed President Trump’s help as nothing was working,” Holmes adds. “He pleaded on X, and the President helped him.”
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She also shared a blog post about her own “redemption arc” that begins with the author discussing her “trusted MAHA crew”—an acronym for Make America Healthy Again, coined by Trump’s Health Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.—and routinely applauds Elon Musk, a former Trump ally and legacy media critic, for his business acumen.
On the redemption arc front, Holmes reintroduced herself to her followers this week as a no-nonsense straight talker, writing, “My name is Elizabeth Holmes. Pay strict attention to what I say because I choose my words carefully and never repeat myself.”
She added, “Recently, I planned and set in motion events to topple the narrative you have been force fed by the media. The truths that will come to light can not be stopped. Follow along for what’s to come.” That includes a subscribers-only book club, where a one-dollar membership gets you access to “private updates” about her case and her “journey [that are] too sensitive for the rest of the internet.” (Possibly including “thirst traps?”)
Other women at the same facility also keep up their accounts via proxy, such as former reality TV star Jen Shah, who was convicted of running a telemarketing fraud scheme targeting elders. Her Instagram feed features new posts, mostly warm and fuzzy updates about her family.
For more on Holmes’ downfall, you can read Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who exposed Theranos’ fraudulent practices while working at The Wall Street Journal.
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As a news and features writer at PCMag, I cover the biggest tech trends that shape the way we live and work. I specialize in on-the-ground reporting, uncovering stories from the people who are at the center of change—whether that’s the CEO of a high-valued startup or an everyday person taking on Big Tech. I also cover daily tech news and breaking stories, contextualizing them so you get the full picture.
I came to journalism from a previous career working in Big Tech on the West Coast. That experience gave me an up-close view of how software works and how business strategies shift over time. Now that I have my master’s in journalism from Northwestern University, I couple my insider knowledge and reporting chops to help answer the big question: Where is this all going?
This article was published by WTVG on 2025-11-04 12:56:00
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