Ex-Theranos Lab Director Stands by Testimony, Says Elizabeth Holmes Owes ‘Debt to Society’

The impromptu visit was the basis for one of three motions Ms. Holmes’s lawyers filed last month arguing for a new chance to prove she is innocent of criminal-fraud charges. U.S. District Judge

Edward Davila

has already denied her request for an acquittal. The judge agreed to hold a hearing to ask Dr. Rosendorff about whether his testimony had been truthful and whether the government had asked him to lie.

“At all times I testified truthfully and honestly to the best of my recollection,” Dr. Rosendorff said in response to Judge Davila’s questions. “At all times the government encouraged me to tell the truth and only the truth.”

Dr. Rosendorff said he disagreed with how Ms. Holmes’s lawyers characterized his visit to her home on Aug. 8, and frequently said that he couldn’t recall the content of his two, brief conversations with her partner,

Billy Evans.

“I was pretty nervous. Much of it was a blur,” said Dr. Rosendorff.

Judge Davila didn’t rule Monday on Ms. Holmes’s bid for a new trial after the hearing, which lasted more than an hour. Lawyers said they would file additional comments before the judge makes his final decision.

Dr. Rosendorff, who worked as Theranos’s lab director from 2013 to 2014, testified that he decided to visit Ms. Holmes’s house to try to speak with her to find closure, as he was feeling distressed since her January conviction that her children would spend their formative years without a mother present to raise them. Ms. Holmes and Mr. Evans have one young son born just more than a year ago, and Dr. Rosendorff indicated the couple may be expecting a second child.

“It is my understanding that Ms. Holmes may be pregnant again,” said Dr. Rosendorff. He added that he also has a young child.

Ms. Holmes, who appeared at court visibly pregnant, hasn’t publicly addressed whether she’s expecting another child. She and Mr. Evans didn’t respond to questions from The Wall Street Journal and an attorney for Ms. Holmes,

Lance Wade,

declined to comment on Dr. Rosendorff’s comments.

Dr. Rosendorff said his hope was to forgive Ms. Holmes, “not so much for her but for me, so that I could finally put this saga behind me and move on with my life.”

“At this point she needs to pay her debt to society,” he testified.

The bulk of the hearing was taken up by questions from defense attorney Mr. Wade, in which he tried to suggest Dr. Rosendorff had serious mental health issues, among other efforts to discredit him as a witness. Dr. Rosendorff disputed the idea that he and Ms. Holmes were friends, that the government had manipulated his testimony in pursuit of a conviction and that mental health issues had compromised the truthfulness of his testimony in her trial.

“To the extent that you tried to make me out to be a liar or inconsistent, my statements have always been consistent,” Dr. Rosendorff told Mr. Wade.

Mr. Wade asked whether Dr. Rosendorff recorded his conversations with Mr. Evans at the couple’s home in August. The former lab director said he didn’t remember. When Mr. Wade asked Dr. Rosendorff if he could pull out his phone on the witness stand and check, Dr. Rosendorff responded that he wouldn’t.

Ms. Holmes was convicted in January of three counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud for misleading investors about her blood-testing startup’s finances, business prospects and technology. She was acquitted of several counts of defrauding patients, the part of the trial for which Dr. Rosendorff’s testimony was most relevant.

Ms. Holmes is scheduled to be sentenced on Nov. 18. The date was pushed back by a month to accommodate Monday’s hearing.

“It’s a small victory for Elizabeth Holmes for as long as she gets to stay out of jail,” said Bianca Forde, a former federal prosecutor. “She ultimately may just be delaying the inevitable but ultimately it’s her right to do so.”

Dr. Rosendorff emerged as a central witness in the government’s case against Ms. Holmes. He testified across five days about the concerns that he brought directly to Ms. Holmes about Theranos’s blood-testing technology, his efforts to delay the use of the company’s blood-testing equipment on real patients and how, in conversations with doctors and patients, he was pressured to find excuses for inaccurate test results that deflected blame from Theranos.

The government called 29 witnesses to testify against Ms. Holmes, including three additional former Theranos lab directors. Ms. Holmes’s attorneys also extensively cross-examined Dr. Rosendorff, including asking questions about the government’s conduct and his interactions with prosecutors.

Dr. Rosendorff previously revealed that he was a source for the Journal in 2015 before the paper published a series of articles revealing that Theranos’s finger-stick lab tests were unreliable and that they often used traditional machines instead.

On Monday, defense attorney Mr. Wade brought up an interview Dr. Rosendorff gave to the South African Jewish Report published in September, in which Dr. Rosendorff said the stress of being a whistleblower led to a breakdown, medication, hospitalization and health problems, according to the article.

The government objected to Mr. Wade’s health questions, and Dr. Rosendorff declined to answer them. That prompted Mr. Wade to ask him: “Do you want there to be another trial, sir?”

“No,” Dr. Rosendorff replied.

Write to Heather Somerville at [email protected]