Last October, The Wall Street Journal published a now-famous story that brought up concerns over how Theranos' blood tests were run and how accurate they were.
Four months before that story was published, Theranos sent in a legal team of five lawyers to try and squash the story, Vanity Fair's Nick Bilton reports. That team included David Boies, the high-profile lawyer who has also represented clients such as Bill Gates and now sits on Theranos' board of directors.
"The Theranos legal team then did their best to discredit dozens of independent sources whom [John] Carreyrou had interviewed. The legal team roared, they showed teeth, they tried to intimidate. After a very tense five hours, the person told me that Boies and his platoon exited the newsroom, leaving behind the very serious specter of a lawsuit," Bilton wrote.
The reason for the legal intervention, as reported by Vanity Fair and confirmed by Business Insider, was because The Journal had documents that disclosed trade secrets and were concerned that these would be published.