James Mattis wants the world to know Elizabeth Holmes lied to him as much as she did the general public. The former secretary of defense took the stand Wednesday in the fraud trial of the disgraced founder of Theranos. In addition to being a four-star Marine Corps general, Mattis was a member of Theranos’ board, having invested $85,000 and advocated for the U.S. military to adopt the company’s technology. He testified that Holmes was his primary source and that he believed the “sharp, articulate, committed” startup founder’s claims about the efficiency of her technology. He said he was not aware that Theranos had landed any military contracts, punching a major hole in Holmes’ claim that soldiers used her company’s machines in the battlefields of Afghanistan. After The Wall Street Journal began its series of exposés debunking Theranos’ outlandish claims, however, Mattis said he felt increasingly defeated. He said, “I thought it was something we could fix if we got the truth out there. There just came a point when I didn’t know what to believe about Theranos anymore… We were unable to help her on the fundamental issues that she was grappling with if we only saw them in the rearview mirror.”