DOJ Goes After Whistleblower in Defense of Gender Affirming Clinic

(RepublicanDaily.org) – The U.S. Department of Justice has indicted a Texas doctor accused of disclosing confidential records of minor patients who underwent transgender care.

Thirty-four-year-old surgeon Dr. Eithan Haim, who has taken to calling himself a whistleblower on illegal gender-affirming therapies for minors, is facing charges linked to his alleged illegal procurement of private patient information and sharing it with outside sources. The patients were also not under Haim’s care. He is accused of obtaining the information, which he shared with a conservative activist, in an intentional attempt to “cause malicious harm” to Houston-based medical facility, Texas Children’s Hospital.

Haim, who is based in Dallas, worked at Texas Children’s Hospital for his residency. However, in 2023, he requested a reactivation of his login credentials, which he used to access private information on patients who were not under his care, and then sharing the said information with a conservative activist, Christopher Rufo. Rufo in turn published a story that claimed that the children’s hospital was secretly providing certain patients with transgender care.

At the time of Haim’s alleged crime, gender-affirming care was not illegal in Texas, but the hospital had announced the year before that it would stop providing gender-affirming care. The Texas legislature eventually made gender-affirming therapies illegal in the state in September 2023. The information Haim provided was used to claim that the hospital was still providing illegal gender-affirming care to minors.

U.S. Attorney Alamdar S. Hamdani wrote in the indictment that Haim had illegally obtained pediatric patient information that was protected under HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) rules.

If found guilty, Haim could spend as much as a decade in jail, as well as a $250,000 penalty. The surgeon has pleaded not guilty to the charges, asserting that he has done nothing wrong.

“[l will] stand up for whistleblowers everywhere,” the embattled physician said. He added that what he did was simply reporting incidents of what he considered to be “child abuse.”