Trump DOJ drops case against Texas doctor who blew whistle on transgender medicine for minors

The case against transgender medicine whistleblower Dr. Eithan Haim was dismissed with prejudice on Friday following a months-long legal battle. 

“The United States has finally agreed to drop the case against Dr. Haim, and the Court just granted dismissal,” Marcella Burke, attorney for Eithan Haim, told Fox News Digital. “The case has been dismissed with prejudice so that the federal government can never again come after him for blowing the whistle on the secret pediatric transgender program at Texas Children’s Hospital.” 

Haim was the subject of an ongoing criminal case brought by the Biden Department of Justice (DOJ) after he leaked documents to the media that revealed Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston was performing transgender medical procedures on minors through May 2023. Hospital leadership had announced it had stopped providing sex-change surgeries and puberty blockers the year before, after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton ruled it constituted child abuse under state law.

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The court’s ruling “fully vindicates Dr. Haim,” Burke said. “We thank everyone who helped along the way to bring this massive injustice to light, and we are grateful to secure this victory on behalf of our client.”

“The fight against the evils he exposed continues, but this dismissal represents a repudiation of the weaponization of federal law enforcement and the first step in accountability for the misdeeds we have all witnessed in this case.”

The dismissal came shortly after Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., spoke with the Trump DOJ about the case, urging them “to immediately stop the Biden Admin’s malicious prosecution” of Haim, “the brave whistleblower who exposed illegal gender transition surgeries on minors in Texas,” Hawley wrote on X. “He should be thanked, not prosecuted.”

“Following my call this morning, I am delighted to report the Trump DOJ is now moving to DISMISS this illegitimate prosecution,” Hawley announced on X a few hours later. 

Haim was a resident at the Baylor College of Medicine from June 2018 to June 2023 and worked at Texas Children’s Hospital during part of his residency. 

In a piece published in the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal, Haim claimed that three days after the announcement that transgender medical procedures had stopped, a surgeon implanted a hormone device in an 11-year-old girl who was experiencing gender dysphoria. Then, over the course of the next year, Haim said multiple colleagues told him they were implanting puberty-blocking devices in transgender-identifying minors. 

DOJ prosecutors alleged that the medical records Haim sent to City Journal’s Chris Rufo were published with children’s names, but Haim’s lawyers claim all patient information was redacted. The DOJ indicted Haim on charges that he violated the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which protects patients’ health information and gives them rights over their health records.

Notably, HIPAA regulations permit the disclosure of protected information to stop egregious medical misconduct. 

Between the original May 29 indictment to the second indictment on October 10, the DOJ changed some of its language, removing any mention of “HIPAA protected” information and changed the victims of the alleged harm caused by Haim’s actions from “TCH’s physicians and patients” to “TCH and its physicians.”

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Fox News Digital reported in December that the prosecutor leading the charge against Haim had been taken off the case after information revealed a major conflict of interest regarding her family’s involvement in the hospital system.

Additionally, according to lawyers on the case and court documents reviewed by Fox News Digital, the DOJ was in possession of information that disproved the HIPAA violations from the start. 

The DOJ originally claimed that Haim did not provide care to TCH patients after 2021, which was used as the basis for its claims that Haim had no reason to access patient records, but the unsealed documents disprove this claim, according to Haim’s lawyers. 

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