Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes asks to delay trial due to pregnancy

Theranos Inc. founder Elizabeth Holmes is pregnant, her lawyers and the government said in a court filing requesting a six-week delay for her fraud trial which was due to start July 13.

“On March 2, 2021, counsel for defendant advised the government that defendant is pregnant, with an expected due date in July 2021,” prosecutors and Holmes’s lawyers said in the filing Friday. “In light of this development, it is not feasible to begin the trial on July 13, 2021, as currently scheduled.”

The two sides asked for the trial to start Aug. 31 instead.

If U.S. District Judge Edward Davila in San Jose, California, agrees to the request, it would be the fourth time Holmes’s trial has been delayed. It was initially scheduled to start in July 2020 and was then moved to October before it was again reset for March — both of those delays due to the pandemic. Davila has repeatedly pushed for the trial to start, hoping conditions will improve enough once more of the population is vaccinated.

Meanwhile, Holmes and prosecutors are in the thick of a fight over what evidence jurors will get to see and hear. Davila’s decisions will shape the evidence as well as the two sides’ strategies about what arguments lawyers will emphasize or be forced to defend.

The case is U.S. v. Holmes, 18-cr-00258, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Jose).