You shouldn’t need any further evidence that the only reason that the Department of Justice is targeting courageous whistleblower Dr. Eithan Haim with a life-destroying criminal prosecution is that he ran afoul of the transgender ideology that dominates the Biden administration. But if you do, the superseding indictment that DOJ filed on Thursday provides it.
DOJ’s original indictment propagated the false, but incendiary, notion that Dr. Haim disclosed HIPAA-protected information about pediatric patients and that journalist Christopher Rufo “published [that] HIPAA protected information.” It further misled the world into thinking that Dr. Haim sneakily obtained access to Texas Children’s Hospital’s electronic medical patient files more than two years after his work at the hospital had ended. And it alleged that Dr. Haim “caused malicious harm to TCH, pediatric patients at TCH and its physicians by contacting” Rufo.
DOJ’s superseding indictment implicitly concedes the major point that I spelled out in my first post on its persecution of Dr. Haim: Dr. Haim did not disclose HIPAA-protected information to Rufo, and Rufo did not publish HIPAA-protected information.
Paragraph 18 of the original indictment alleged that Rufo (“Person1”) “published HIPAA protected information obtained by Haim.” Paragraph 14 of the superseding indictment drops the mistaken claim that the information that Rufo published was HIPAA-protected. It now contends only that Rufo “published personal information.” That information, I’ll emphasize, did not remotely identify the patients, and DOJ has never contended otherwise. As I’ve pointed out, DOJ discloses far more revealing information about the patients, as it identifies them by their initials.
Unlike the original indictment, Counts 2 through 4 of the superseding indictment no longer contain the false charge that Dr. Haim “did obtain and/or wrongfully disclose” HIPAA-protected information. Those revised counts now allege that he “did obtain and/or use” such information.
DOJ’s superseding indictment also acknowledges what I highlighted a month ago: far from sneaking his way onto TCH’s patient database long after his work at TCH ended, Haim continued to see patients at TCH at least as late as April 2023. The superseding indictment no longer alleges that Haim in April 2023 “requested remote access so he could discreetly covertly access pediatric patient files.” It instead implicitly recognizes that he legitimately had access to the database.
DOJ’s superseding indictment no longer contends that Dr. Haim “caused malicious harm” to anyone. It instead maintains that he acted with an “intent” to “cause malicious harm to TCH and its physicians”—not to patients. So why are the patient-focused protections of HIPAA being misused to protect TCH and its physicians against having their abuses exposed?
DOJ’s allegation that Dr. Haim intended malicious harm against TCH and its physicians is absurd. As I’ve stated from the beginning, there is not an iota of evidence that would suggest that Dr. Haim acted with malice. In his own words, “I knew that it was my moral responsibility to expose what was happening to these children.”
Although it’s good to see DOJ retreat from some of its more outlandish claims, that retreat makes it all the more outrageous that it is continuing to prosecute Dr. Haim and to punish him with penalties of up to 10 years in prison and up to $250,000 in fines.. It is inconceivable that the Biden administration would be prosecuting another whistleblower on these alleged facts if one of its pet causes—here, transgender medical interventions on children—were not involved. It’s long past time for Attorney General Merrick Garland to dismiss this indictment.