Ms. Holmes’s lawyers in the filing demanded records from the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services related to their interactions with John Carreyrou, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal who broke the story about problems with Theranos’s technology. He later wrote a devastating portrayal of the company, “Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup,” that paints a picture of questionable practices in the company’s operations.

The defense claimed Mr. Carreyrou’s interactions with the federal agencies, including efforts to urge others to report problems at Theranos to regulators, is “exculpatory” information that must be turned over to the defendants.

“In evaluating the government’s case, the jury should be aware that an outside actor, eager to break a story (and portray the story as a work of investigative journalism), was exerting influence on the regulatory process in a way that appears to have warped the agencies’ focus on the company and possibly biased the agencies’ findings against it,” the filing states.

The demand for the communications is based on what is known as the Brady doctrine, named for the Supreme Court’s 1963 decision in Brady v. Maryland. In that case, the court held that prosecutors must turn over any evidence to a defendant that is both material and exculpatory. In the Brady case, prosecutors failed to disclose evidence that the defendant did not kill the victim but that a co-defendant committed the crime. That would have supported an argument for a reduced punishment.

In demanding the communications with Mr. Carreyrou, Ms. Holmes’s defense appears to be creating a picture that government regulators overreacted when a reporter from The Wall Street Journal pushed them to investigate and misunderstood what was going on at Theranos.