Thread by @doratki

Happy Friday from San Jose! I'm waiting for day 10 of Holmes' trial to start. No crowds today, but there's a new filing by @JohnCarreyrou who's gotten himself an atty. He's a possible witness and wants the judge to assure him he won't be barred from watching/covering the trial.

Judge Davila is on the bench, jurors are in their seats and ex-Theranos lab director Adam Rosendorff is back on the stand for the third (and hopefully last) day of his cross-examination.

Holmes' counsel Lance Wade begins by picking apart Rosendorff's testimony that Holmes and other execs rejected his request that Theranos use an alternative assessment procedure - or AAP - in its proficiency testing.

Wade points to a Dec 2013 doc that Rosendorff signed laying out proficiency testing protocol, including an AAP, for Theranos' Edison 3.5. (On direct, Rosendorff said in mid- 2014, Theranos didn't have a proficiency testing plan in place.)

Wade is going through a series of emails about quality control tests done on Theranos' Edison devices in the spring 2014. Erika Cheung is on the emails, as is Rosendorff. It's unclear where Wade is going with this.

Wade points to a March 2014 email that Balwani wrote saying Edison's proficiency tests for vitamin D "looks good." Rosendorff takes issue with Balwani's statement. "I do not think Mr. Balwani was qualified" to look at the data and make the assessment it "looks good," he says.

Wade points to minutes from a March 2014 meeting that says Theranos execs discussed the "AAP for all 7 Edison assays." Rosendorff says he doesn't have a clear recollection of what was discussed in the meeting, but he doesn't have a reason to doubt the accuracy of the mins.

Wade brings up another Balwani email about vitamin d tests. But Rosendorff is not impressed. "In general I don't think Balwani was qualified" to be directing the quality control study or direct CLIA staff or make assessments about the validity of data, he says.

In 2014, Balwani suggested Theranos' lab increase vitamin d testing sample size, but Rosendorff says Balwani shouldn't be making that call b/c he wasn't lab director and it would've tied up the devices. In another email, Balwani said make the changes "only if they make sense."

In April 2014, Rosendorff reviewed a PowerPoint presentation that was created on proficiency testing and AAP to dispel confusion on the CLIA team about Theranos' PT policy. (Prosecutors never brought this up during Rosendorff's direct exam.)

The PowerPoint explains Theranos' PT policy of using "actual clinical specimens" and comparing Edison blood-test results with results on other FDA approved devices.

Wade points to an Oct 2014 email from a doc who said his patient got wrong FT4 and TSH results, and wanted to speak with Rosendorff. Rosendorff said he would call, but Wade points out that he waited a week and forgot.

Wade: Everyone makes mistakes.

Rosendorff: Sure.

Wade is pointing to another email about a patient's testosterone test. Wade accidentally lets the patient name slip, and Rosendorff calls him out on it. The judge says (repeatedly) that the patient's name is stricken from the record.

Wade shows Rosendorff an Oct 2014 email in which Rosendorff wrote "please let Christian [Holmes] handle this," in response to a doctor's request to talk to him about a patient's results.

Wade points out Rosendorff's email counters his testimony on direct that he didn't know Christian was responding to doctor complaints and Christian wasn't qualified to talk to them. Rosendorff tries to explain: "I was frustrated by the inability to explain discrepant results."

Wade pulls up an email Balwani sent Rosendorff that Wade calls "detailed."

Rosendorff: "It's long."

Balwani's lengthy Oct 2014 email to Rosendorff tells him "you need to bring up the issues with the right people." But Rosendorff says Theranos staff were not implementing his AAP protocol for 13 assays. "I was not clear what they were doing," Rosendorff says.

We're taking a 20 minute break. Brb...

Jury is filing back in and I'm debating in my mind who Rosendorff dislikes most: Daniel Young, Sunny Balwani or Lance Wade.

Notably, Rosendorff hasn't said anything yet that has made me think he definitely dislikes Elizabeth Holmes, even though this whole trial is about her.

Speaking of Holmes, Wade just brought up Rosendorff's May 2014 meeting when he told Holmes he was "freaked out" by the wide range of hCG results he was seeing.

Rosendorff tells Wade: She seemed pretty calm about the whole thing. She didn’t seem to share my level of alarm.

To counter Rosendorff's testimony, Wade points to an email that Balwani sent Holmes (presumably before she met with Rosendorff) telling her about the hCG problem. Wade points out that Holmes replied six minutes later: "How did that happen?"

Rosendorff said in his direct examination that he didn't meet with Elizabeth Holmes on hCG patient data, but Wade points to Holmes' calendar from May 2014 that shows they met for about an hour. He says "ok."

Oh boy. Lance Wade and Adam Rosendorff are quibbling over the exact time in PST Rosendorff sent an email to Elizabeth Holmes. Rosendorff is getting annoyed: "Do I have an independent recollection of when I sent this email from seven years ago? No, I do not."

Balwani wrote in a June 2014 email that Rosendorff was "EXTREMELY frustrated" that as a lab director he wasn't being kept in the loop when "we are asking CLIA members to run R&D experiments w/o him being involved or aware." Balwani said the info "has to" go through Rosendorff.

Rosendorff says that at the time: For me the urgency was to offer an hCG test that was accurate. The urgency for me was not to put the hCG test back on the Edison.

Wade is trying to get Rosendorff to concede that Theranos' hCG testing complaints were partly due to reagents being backordered. Rosendorff keeps saying he wasn't aware of the backorder issue.

Wade gets Rosendorff to acknowledge that Theranos removed 2 of 6 data points in its quality control tests. But he adds: "I thought it was unusual. I hadn’t recalled it being done anywhere."

Wade gets Rosendorff to agree that fielding customer service complaints can be a difficult job. Rosendorff notes that he wasn't involved in Theranos sales and "by the time [complaints] were escalated to me the vast majority of them pointed to serious issues."

Trial is breaking for the day. After three-days, Lance Wade still hasn't finished Adam Rosendorff's cross-examination.

Lance Wade says he thinks he'll go "all day" Tuesday cross-examining Rosendorff. But he'll review his notes and let prosecutors know over the weekend if he thinks he'll wrap cross early enough for another witness.