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Elizabeth Holmes' Defense Tries To Pick Apart Damaging Testimony From Theranos Project Manager

SAN JOSE (KPIX) -- The defense was on damage control in the Elizabeth Holmes fraud trial on Wednesday as one of the attorneys for the defendant grilled a former Theranos project manager.

Daniel Edlin gave potentially damaging testimony against Holmes a day earlier when he told prosecutors that during media and investor demonstrations of the Theranos devices, blood tests would actually be run in a lab, not on the machines themselves.

Prosecutors called that deceptive.

But Wednesday, Edlin explained that those demos were sometimes run just to show the device's graphical user interface.

"This witness scored some points for the defense by saying the demos
he ran were not just to run blood samples, but also to show how the hardware worked. He also said he wasn't trying to deceive anybody," said Michele Hagan, a former prosecutor and legal analyst who is following the trial.

Earlier on Wednesday, Judge Edward Davila threatened to throw some people out of the courtroom because they were making too much noise.

He called out a spectator whose cell phone went off more than once and media reporters, saying their typing on keyboards is so loud, jurors complained they have a hard time hearing the testimony.

The judge assigned a U.S. Marshall to keep watch over the public gallery and things did quiet down.

The trial resumes on Friday.

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