Why wouldn't Trump pardon this swindler?

Elizabeth Holmes, founder of Theranos, angles for release by extolling MAGA.

- MARK Z. BARABAK

For a while, it seemed Elizabeth Holmes was everywhere.

Peering wide-eyed and black-turtlenecked from a shelf load of magazine covers. Honored as a "Woman of the Year" by Glamour.

Touted as one of Time's "100 Most Influential People." At age 30, Holmes was regarded as a preternatural business talent-and, more impressively, described as the youngest self-made female billionaire in history -owing to her founding and stewardship of Theranos, a Silicon Valley start-up that promised to revolutionize healthcare by diagnosing a host of maladies with just a pinprick's worth of blood.

It was all a big con job.

Her medical claims were a sham. Theranos' technology was bogus. Even the husky TED-talking voice Holmes used to invest herself with greater seriousness and authority was a put-on.

(The turtlenecks were an austere affectation she cribbed from Steve Jobs.) In January 2022, a San José jury convicted Holmes on four counts of fraud and conspiracy. At age 37, she became a case study in gullibility and greed.

Months later, Holmes - by then a mother of two-was sentenced to 11 years and three months in prison. She began serving her term in May 2023, at a women's prison camp outside Houston.

Now, Holmes who spawned a best-selling book ,podcasts, a documentary, a TV miniseries and, not incidentally, stole hundreds of millions of dollars from investors is lobbying for a pardon from President Trump.

And why not? Game knows game. Grift knows grift.

Of all the powers a president wields, few match his awesome pardon authority.