What did Elizabeth Holmes do? ‘You Can See Everything’ revisits Theranos founder’s fall from grace
A24’s ‘You Can See Everything,’ by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, chronicles the weeks leading up to Elizabeth Holmes’ sentencing to federal prison. According to a summary on A24’s website, the film begins 34 days before Holmes is due to report for her sentence as she invites a crew to follow her around. Fielder and Oppenheim continued to film for three years after that, tracking her well beyond the day she reported to prison. The documentary is set to debut in theatres this October, and the recently released trailer gives viewers a glimpse into what to expect. However, the short clip also raises one important question: What exactly did she do?
Holmes founded Theranos in 2003 at the age of 19. She dropped out of Stanford University, where she had the idea for a machine that would perform more than 200 blood tests from only a single finger prick. Her idea quickly attracted nearly $1 billion in investment from Rupert Murdoch, the Walton family, Betsy DeVos, and more. Holmes built herself a Steve Jobs-inspired public image, including black turtlenecks, while Theranos’ board included names such as Henry Kissinger and James Mattis. The problem, however, was that the machine never worked. Theranos named it Edison, but the device was said to produce inaccurate results. Holmes and her company allegedly used machines from rival firms to conduct the tests and pass them off as their own. That was until The Wall Street Journal revealed the truth to the public.
Federal prosecutors accused Holmes of fraud in 2018, and she was convicted in January 2022 on four counts of defrauding investors. She was acquitted of one count of conspiracy and three counts related to defrauding patients. The Department of Justice said the charges were related to wire transfers of more than $140 million. In November 2022, a judge sentenced Holmes to 11 years and three months in prison, and she was ordered to pay $452 million in restitution to investors. Holmes told the court before surrendering to authorities that she was “devastated” by her failings. "I have felt deep pain for what people went through because I failed them. To each of them, I am so, so sorry. I gave everything I had to save the company," she said in court.
Holmes began serving her sentence in a minimum-security federal prison camp in Bryan, Texas, in May 2023. Her sentence has since been reduced under new guidelines, and Holmes continues to pursue an appeal after it was denied once. The trailer of ‘You Can See Everything’ raised the question that has followed Holmes throughout the scandal: Can she be trusted? At one point, Fielder asks Holmes whether she is telling the truth to the cameras. “I’m not that person. I can promise you that,” Holmes responds. “I don’t have anything to deceive you on.”
