Faithful readers will recall that I extensively covered, and vigorously condemned, the Biden administration’s outrageous political prosecution of whistleblower Dr. Eithan Haim, who revealed that Texas Children’s Hospital secretly continued to perform transgender medical interventions on minor children after it had publicly announced that it would no longer do so.
I’m pleased to report that Dr. Haim has filed a lawsuit that alleges that Texas Children’s Hospital, Baylor College of Medicine, and three individuals “unlawfully procured a criminal investigation and prosecution of Dr. Haim by knowingly providing materially false information to authorities.”
The lawsuit alleges that the defendants “concocted a fabricated story that Dr. Haim’s disclosures violated HIPAA, an allegation they knew to be false.” Perhaps most eye-catching among the allegations is that one of the defendants, Dr. Kristy Rialon,
began posting anonymous reviews on Dr Haim’s publicly available WebMD physician profile, claiming he should be in jail for being a terrible doctor and falsely accusing him of mutilating patients. In one review posted September 16, 2023, two weeks before Dr. Haim was starting his first job as an attending surgeon, Dr. Rialon claimed that she was one of Dr. Haim’s patients and that he raped her. All these reviews were posted during the time that Dr. Haim’s identity as the whistleblower had not been publicly released. She made the false accusations to push for the DOJ to prosecute Dr. Haim and to punish him for exposing her part in TCH’s unethical practices. [Emphasis added.]
Those who have followed the matter closely might be surprised that the lead federal prosecutor, Tina Ansari, is not among the defendants. That’s likely because prosecutors enjoy broad immunity for many of their actions—and because the discovery that Dr. Haim intends to undertake might be needed to show that Ansari engaged in misconduct outside the scope of that immunity. The fact that the complaint refers to Ansari as a “willing accomplice” amply signals that she is not in the clear.
(As I have undertaken to make clear throughout this post, the charges against the defendants that I recount are allegations set forth in the complaint. I do not purport to have any personal knowledge concerning them, and it will be Dr. Haim’s responsibility to prove their accuracy.)