Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes may go unmasked at US criminal trial

A lawyer for Elizabeth Holmes said her team has a ‘strong preference’ that she not wear a mask normally used to prevent the spread of the coronavirus when her trial kicks off later this month.

Elizabeth Holmes and the judge will likely be the only consistently unmasked participants at her criminal trial, with a surge in the delta variant creating much concern for the participants. Holmes appeared in-person in San Jose federal court Monday for the first time since the pandemic closed courthouses across the U.S. Her attorneys and prosecutors were masked and behind plexiglass panels to lay down ground rules for her trial that’s scheduled to start at the end of the month. U.S. District Judge Edward Davila, sitting perched above everyone else and behind his own plexiglass panel, was the only unmasked person in the windowless courtroom. Holmes, who reportedly had a baby last month, sat masked between her lawyers for the hourslong hearing covering a wide range of issues including, briefly, her potential defense that she suffers from a mental disease.