Elizabeth Holmes’ lawsuit against the New York Times and The New Yorker has gone into day two of testimony. On Friday, she told jurors in court that the Times and The New Yorker ran untrue articles claiming she bribed members of Congress. Today, she did the same to the Amazon and Samsung testimonies.
This is the full deposition for October 31, 2017, given to Axios by Holmes’ legal counsel George Riley. The video was shared on YouTube and Twitch. It includes two pivotal portions, in which Holmes said the Times and the magazine “lied” about the dates of meetings and that she and other company executives never paid politicians to lobby. The deposition was given just one week after the Times published an article that alleged the medical-device company pressured politicians for funding, and “frequently passed large checks to companies in Washington that were lobbying on its behalf.”
Riley also said that the description of a check for “hundreds of thousands of dollars” “is false, inaccurate, and malicious,” adding that the proposed deal would have valued the biotechnology company at just $165 million.
“I understand that you believe I wanted to cut a check for hundreds of thousands of dollars to a lobbyist, but that’s not what I asked for,” Holmes said. “Did the congressman raise that, was he saying it? I said, ‘Why not give him a check?’ So we went to a meeting, and a lobbyist came to one of the meetings.”
“Did you want to give a lobbyist a check? Did you specifically want to do that?” her counsel asked.
“Yes,” Holmes said.
Holmes said the Times and The New Yorker cited a meeting with three Democrats and one Republican in the summer of 2017. But she said during that meeting, she had been asked a question about bundling of contributions, “not lobbying,” and her response was that it was not lobbying.
“This is not a complaint about lobbyists. This is not a complaint about PACs,” Holmes said.
“Did you think that was a bribery?” Riley asked.
“No,” Holmes said.
I’ll share the deposition transcript, but you can watch the video of Holmes giving her testimony over at Axios.