BAD BLOOD

Elizabeth Holmes Gets Shock Early Prison Release After Trump Plea

The Theranos founder had already had her sentence reduced.

Controversial Theranos founder—and viral movie meme star—Elizabeth Holmes will be moved from federal prison to a residential halfway house in Texas next year.

Holmes, 42, began an 11-year sentence for fraud in May 2023. In December 2025, she formally asked President Donald Trump for early release, according to Bloomberg.

The former Theranos CEO, who launched the company when she was just 19, went viral this month after a teaser from Nathan Fielder’s upcoming documentary You Can See Everything was released. In an intense clip, the convicted fraudster asks Fielder, “Why would I deceive you?”

At its height, Theranos was valued at $9 billion, but a Wall Street Journal investigation discovered that the Silicon Valley blood-testing startup was a scam, prompting a series of explosive federal investigations. She was found guilty of three counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

Holmes has been held at the minimum-security Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas, for the last three years and four months. She is doing time alongside Jeffrey Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell and Jen Shah of The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.

She will be moved to the Austin Transitional Center in Del Valle, Texas, in August next year, according to ABC News, which cited an update from the Department of Justice’s Victim Notification System.

Holmes claimed that Theranos had revolutionized blood testing by running multiple tests using just a few drops of blood from the finger, replacing the need to use syringes to draw vials of blood. At its peak in 2014, the startup raised over $700 million from investors.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons refused to confirm the ABC News report. A spokesperson said that it “does not discuss the conditions of confinement for any individual, including release plans.”

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“Additionally, per BOP policy, specific designation information cannot be released until after an individual arrives at their designated institution,” the statement continued.

It is unclear if the early release plan is in any way related to Holmes’ plea for clemency from the White House, which was submitted last year, according to CNN, which cited a request filed with the Department of Justice.

The Office of the Pardon Attorney still lists her plea as “pending.” The Daily Beast reached out to the White House, but it does not generally comment on clemency requests.

The Bureau of Prisons said factors used to assign individuals to different facilities include “the level of security and supervision required, medical or programmatic needs, separation or security considerations necessary for the individual’s safety, and other relevant factors, such as proximity to the individual’s release residence.”

Holmes’ family moved to Houston when she was a child.

Halfway houses, which the BOP refers to as “Residential Reentry Centers,” provide a supervised environment for inmates nearing the end of their sentence, as well as services such as financial management assistance and career counseling.

The Austin Transitional Center is a 460-bed “community corrections center” that is owned by a private prison company. It is one of eight Residential Reentry Centers in Texas.

The Daily Beast has contacted the Federal Bureau of Prisons for comment.

Holmes already had her sentence reduced by two years in July 2023, and then reduced by an additional year in March. ABC reports she was scheduled to be released on Feb. 22, 2030, with the new date resulting from a retroactive change to federal sentencing guidelines and earned time through the First Step Act.

GOT CUT SOME SLACK

Elizabeth Holmes’ Sentence Reduced by Two Years

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After her release from the halfway house, Holmes will reside in Austin, Texas, and be supervised by the local United States Probation Office, according to the Victim Notification System.

In March, U.S. District Judge Edward Davila granted a motion to reduce her sentence. “To be clear, this sentence reduction does not diminish the enormity of Holmes’s crimes, nor does it ignore the significant negative impact her conduct has had on the community,” he wrote.

The Obama-appointed judge added, “The hundreds of millions of dollars in losses caused by Holmes’s fraud speak for themselves... Holmes’s revised sentence continues to reflect a just punishment for her serious offense and serves as a reminder that the scales of justice will balance.”

Holmes, who was lauded as an iconic tech pioneer before her fall, has been the subject of HBO documentary The Inventor; a miniseries and podcast called The Dropout, and the award-winning book Bad Blood.

Nathan Fielder’s new documentary will be released on Oct. 16. It follows Holmes and her boyfriend, Billy Evans, in the weeks before she went to prison. Evans is an heir to the Evans Hotel Group and a biotechnology startup founder.

A new trailer for the documentary sees Fielder ask Holmes, “You really feel you did nothing wrong?,” and her replying, “I did not.”

He asks Evans, “Weren’t you worried she was scamming you?” He replies, “100 percent, but what did she have to gain from me?” Fielder notes, “Well, isn’t your family rich?” Evans says, “Yeah, I think that there’s, like, a lot of different levels of wealth.”

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