The mystery behind Elizabeth Holmes’ tweeting spree from prison

Elizabeth Holmes, the infamous founder of Theranos who is currently serving out a more than 11-year prison sentence in Texas, re-entered the zeitgeist this past fall—in September to be exact. One of her first courses of business was to retweet a Fox News interview with JD Vance.

Or, at least, someone retweeted it.

Over the next couple of days, Holmes’ account on X began to muse over what Holmes would tell the 19-year-old version of herself who was about to drop out of Stanford and build Theranos (“lean into fear;” “don’t be discouraged;” etc.). And later in September, after the conservative activist Charlie Kirk was murdered in Utah, the account began posting a stream of writings about the importance of free speech and support for Kirk’s widow, Erika. “Everyone might be posting today about Charlie. But I’ll do the same 3-5 years from now,” Holmes’s account wrote.

Her X account has become something of a spectacle—starting a book club, picking fights with All In podcaster Jason Calacanis, sending out seemingly live tweets about life in prison at FTC Bryan, the minimum-security prison camp where Holmes is serving her sentence; posting photos of her before prison with her kids; and responding to critics with snide remarks about her innocence. Since rejoining X a little less than five months ago, Holmes’ account has posted more than 4,400 times.

But here’s the thing: It isn’t really her.

For starters, there’s a note in the bio, suggesting others are pushing the publish button: “Mostly my words, posted by others,” it reads. When I reached out to FTC Bryan and the Federal Bureau of Prisons to inquire about the account, the FPB was quick to say that Holmes can’t post.  

“Individuals inside federal prisons do not have access to the internet or social media,” a spokesperson for the Federal Bureau of Prisons specified, and they are prohibited from keeping cell phones. While the spokesperson said they could “not attest to whether or not a social media account is maintained by someone on the outside,” they made it clear that the posts can’t be coming from inside.

So I’ve been asking around for weeks, trying to figure out who may be ghostwriting Holmes’s account—asking other ghostwriters (and Holmes) who is. For now, it’s a mystery. When I DM’d the account and asked who was running it, someone responded “what is your angle,” then stopped corresponding with me. Holmes did not respond to a letter I sent via snail mail, requesting she call me from Bryan. Her attorney as well as her former crisis publicist Risa Heller didn’t respond to my requests either. Nor did her husband, Billy Evans, who currently runs an AI-powered biotech testing startup.

Garret Caudle, who founded a ghostwriting and marketing agency called Influent that specializes in writing people’s LinkedIn posts, who hadn’t been following her account but reviewed it after I asked about it, suspects Holmes has an entire team behind the operation.

“There’s undoubtedly more than two people. My guess is between three to four people,” he says. “That is something one could do from jail, theoretically, because you can have a single point of contact with a team leader, and talk about the things you want to do in the future. That person can strategize with you, talk about the pillars, and then they’re operating on your behalf.” 

Prisoners in FTC Bryan are able to communicate with the outside world via monitored, paid phone calls, snail mail, email, and in-person visitation. So Holmes has options for passing (mostly) her words to whatever “others” are posting them.

Image Rehabilitation 101

Why Holmes would be investing time and energy in her public image right now is becoming more obvious. Reuters reported just last week that Holmes has been vying for Trump to commute the nearly six years that remain in her sentence. She filed a request to Trump with the Department of Justice sometime last year, according to the department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney website, asking for an early release from prison. That website says the request is currently under review. (The office didn’t respond to a request for comment) Early last year, Holmes had tried to petition for a rehearing for her trial, though that was unanimously denied.

For someone looking to get out of jail early, a request to Trump isn’t a bad strategy. In the year since President Trump was elected, he has doled out pardons and commutations to tech founders, including Ross Ulbricht, the Silk Road dark web founder who was convicted of drug trafficking; Trevor Milton, founder of the electric truck startup Nikola Motor (securities and wire fraud); CZ Zhao, the founder of crypto exchange Binance (willfully violating anti-money laundering and sanctions laws); and Ozy Media founder Carlos Watson  (conspiracy to commit securities fraud and wire fraud and aggravated identity theft).

The X posts on the Holmes account, which have celebrated a Trump executive order and praised members of his administration and other conservative voices, suggest she has had a political change of heart—at least since 2016, when Holmes hosted a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton, Trump’s opponent in that year’s election, in Palo Alto.

Whether or not Holmes is trying to use social media to help with her bid for commutation, she’s garnered a steady following, with more than 66,000 followers on X and lots of engagement on her profile (Holmes has not been posting on other social media sites). Republican blogger Jessica Reed Kraus has written Substack posts about how she has become sympathetic to Holmes and is questioning her guilty verdict. Holmes’ account has, naturally, amplified such takes.

“What does she have that she can really use, other than her personal brand? There’s not a lot,” Caudle says, noting that tech executives tend to think long-term or about their life as a chess board. “So if she is trying to do anything to set her life up and have control over her life, that would be a logical thing for her to wield.”

Social-media ghostwriting—where someone completely takes over a prominent person’s account and posts things on their own in that person’s name—still isn’t widespread among the tech elite, though investors and tech executives getting help with writing and amplification is extremely common, according to Kate Talbot, who has been helping Silicon Valley executives with their social media profiles for 12 years. “I don’t know many people who just have a straight ghostwriter,” she says.

Whatever Holmes’ strategy, if she’s relying on professionals, it most likely isn’t cheap. Three ghostwriters and social media consultants who spoke with Fortune said executives pay between $7,000 to $10,000 a month for ghostwriting services. For prominent individuals, those rates can go much, much higher.

“There are many executives who are spending anywhere between $10,000-$20,000 a month on personal branding-type services,” Caudle says about executives with large brands, noting he knows of at least one executive who dishes out $1 million a year.

If Holmes were to be paying so much, we should be asking how. Her verdict called for her to pay more than $450 million in restitution to her investors. Prosecutors had tried to get Holmes to pay her victims $250 a month once she gets out of prison. But her lawyers argued she was unable to afford that due to her “limited financial resources.” Holmes has maintained she never sold any shares of Theranos, and her net worth was estimated to be $0 in 2016. That raises the question of who’s paying for Holmes’s social spree—or if some fans and family members are doing it for free.

Whatever the case may be, Holmes has a clear message she wants to get out to the public:

“I detest this bunk,” her account wrote about her cell.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com