Posted on 06/05/2020 8:00:38 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Secretary of Defense James Mattis is implicated in one of the largest business scandals of the past decades, described by the Securities and Exchange Commission as an “elaborate, years-long fraud” through which Theranos, led by CEO Elizabeth Holmes and president Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, “exaggerated or made false statements about the company’s technology, business, and financial performance.”
Basically, their biotech startup was founded on the promise of faster, cheaper, painless blood tests. But their technology was fake.
Mattis not only served on Theranos’s board during some of the years it was perpetrating the fraud after he retired from US military service, but he earlier served as a key advocate of putting the company’s technology (technology that was, to be clear, fake) to use inside the military while he was still serving as a general. Holmes is settling the case, paying a $500,000 fee and accepting various other penalties, while Balwani is fighting it out in court.
Nobody on the board is being directly charged with doing anything. But accepting six-figure checks to serve as a frontman for a con operation is the kind of thing that would normally count as a liability in American politics.
[SNIP]
Theranos’s key technology, called Edison machines, didn’t really work, and Theranos wasn’t actually using them to perform its blood tests, relying instead on older Samsung equipment. Theranos offered lower prices than the competition not because it had an innovative new product, but because it was a money-losing startup burning cash raised from venture capitalists.
This scheme worked because Theranos was deeply tied in with the American political, business, and media establishment
[SNIP]
Mattis (who, obviously, has no expertise in medical testing) pushed for the military to use Theranos technology, but it was never actually used because it didn’t work.
(Excerpt) Read more at vox.com ...
Nonetheless, as of December 2015, Mattis was still vouching for the company, telling the Washington Post that he “had quickly seen tremendous potential in the technologies Theranos develops, and I have the greatest respect for the company’s mission and integrity.”
The technology, it is now clear, had no potential, and the company had no integrity.
But by the time Mattis was selected to serve as Trump’s secretary of defense in January 2017, the basic scope of the fraud was already well-known to the public thanks to diligent journalistic work. So was the fact that Mattis was not only earning $150,000 a year for his service on the Theranos board but was also involved in pro-Theranos advocacy while on active military duty.
He duly resigned from Theranos on January 5, 2017 — by which time the company was already commonly described as “embroiled in scandal” by press reports — but, remarkably, the whole affair didn’t come up at his confirmation hearings.
I was wondering when that would be brought up for Mr. Haditha Marines.
From here on out, I will refer to Mattis as “Dirty Dog” instead of “Mad Dog”.
btt
He just wanted to see what the back of Holmes head looked like. That is what all this was about.
What a creep he is.
Hence, Mattis is blackmailable. And you can bet the ranch he, and everyone else, is falling right in line with the communists seeking to overthrow the government.
Which is what this is really all about.
bttt
“This scheme worked because Theranos was deeply tied in with the American political, business, and media establishment”
I used to cringe when they hyped up that crazy broad that ran that place. Any criticisms were deflected by the old “you hate women in power” garbage. Turns out she was a numb nut.
I wonder what happened behind the scenes that led to her demise. Too many of the elites were linked to that company. Someone had to really piss someone else off for them to be busted (though I don’t believe either of them will see a millisecond of jail time).
The Theranos board was criticized at the time as being without sufficient business experience, being stocked instead with big-name political and military figures like Mattis. This facilitated the fraud by Theranos by providing investors with the illusion of board competence based on reputation. Yet the directors were all incurious and inert, with a complete (and well-paid) lack of diligence. Mattis ought to be ashamed of himself.
Howie66,
That is a good one.
He has crapped all over his reputation. He is also a DISGRACE to my Corps!
Thanks for the ping, amigo.
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