The Justice Department filed a reply Tuesday supporting its motion for a gag order against Dr. Eithan Haim, a surgeon indicted by the Biden-Harris administration after he blew the whistle on sex-change procedures for minors.
“The prosecutors in @eithanhaim’s case are doubling down on their shameless effort to ask the court to censor us and our client on @X,” the Burke Law Group, which is representing Haim, said on X. “We will continue to zealously represent @EithanHaim’s liberty, and now his (and our) First Amendment right to Free Speech.”
Haim initially came forward as an anonymous whistleblower to expose gender treatments being performed on minors at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston. He is facing four felony counts of violating the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, also known as HIPAA, according to journalist Chris Rufo, who first reported on Haim’s story.
The Justice Department’s reply in support of its motion for a gag order against Haim and his legal team said the order would “prevent the defendant and his attorney from making inflammatory and unfairly prejudiced statements.”
The DOJ didn’t respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment about examples of what types of speech would and wouldn’t be permitted.
“Given the number of such statements readily available online, the defendant’s national platform and increasing prominence, and his avowed intention to continue to make such statements,” the order said, “there is a substantial likelihood of prejudicing the court’s ability to conduct a fair trial.”
Federal prosecutors argue that Haim is advancing a “false narrative of government corruption,” which “ignores the facts and evidence.” Yet in the next paragraph, prosecutors say most of “the defendant’s ire” is focused on the former lead prosecutor, leaving them unsure if Haim’s claims are true.
Tina Ansari, the former lead prosecutor, withdrew from the case Nov. 21 after concerns arose about a conflict of interest.
Ansari’s family runs coffee and tea company Fresh Brew Group, whose customers include multiple hospitals in the Texas Medical Center, which houses Texas Children’s Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine.
Ansari’s “close family members have substantial financial and political ties” to Texas Children’s Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine, Haim lawyer Ryan Patrick wrote in a Nov. 13 letter to John Pearson, executive assistant U.S. attorney in Houston.
Haim was a resident at the Baylor College of Medicine from June 2018 to June 2023. He worked at Texas Children’s Hospital during part of his residency.
The gag order would “completely prevent Dr. Haim or his counsel from criticizing the prosecution, no matter how correct the criticism,” according to Burke Law Group.
“The prosecution tries to make its case by painting Dr. Haim’s and the defense’s critical tweets as inaccurate,” the law firm’s X post said. “But as the defense already explained in its own filing, all of the public criticism has been richly deserved. Indeed, many of the tweets included pictures from the court’s transcript showing where it was the court, not the defense, that took issue with the government’s shoddy work.”
It is suspicious that the Justice Department filed a motion for a gag order on the same day, Nov. 20, that Ansari withdrew from the case, Haim wrote on X.
“So, my question is this – what do the remaining DOJ prosecutors know about these conflicts and when did they know it?” he asked. “Because if the case against me was brought under conflicted pretenses, the remaining prosecutors cannot cleanse themselves of the odor of corruption by simply kicking Ansari to the curb and continuing on like everything is kosher.”
The DOJ particularly wants to prevent Haim from retweeting allies who have defended him on X, including Ethics and Public Policy Center legal expert Ed Whelan; Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas; psychologist and author Jordan Peterson; and Rufo, according to Burke Law Group.
Texas Children’s Hospital had 30 child gender-transition patients before Texas passed a law prohibiting doctors from providing transgender medical interventions to minors, according to medical watchdog Do No Harm’s database.
The hospital “took away all the public-facing indications that the program was still active,” “but within the hospital, they’re prioritizing it to the highest level,” Haim said.
Haim said in Rufo’s City Journal article that a surgeon implanted a hormone device in an 11-year-old girl who said she identified as a boy three days after the announcement that transgender medical procedures had stopped at the hospital. Multiple colleagues told Haim over the next year they were implanting puberty-blocking devices in minors.
After revealing this information, two federal agents with the Department of Health and Human Services showed up on Haim’s door, saying the documents he sent to Rufo were published with children’s names, violating HIPAA.
But Haim’s lawyers say all patient information was redacted and that HIPAA regulations allow protected information to be disclosed to “prevent or lessen a serious and imminent threat to a person or the public.”
Virginia Allen contributed to this article.
