President Donald Trump’s Justice Department on Friday dropped the Biden administration’s criminal case against Dr. Eithan Haim, who blew the whistle on the transgender procedures being performed on minors at Texas Children’s Hospital in 2023.
The indictment was dismissed with prejudice, according to a court filing, which means the legal claim is permanently dismissed.
“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,” defense attorney Marcella Burke of Burke Law Group told National Review. “This fully vindicates Dr. Haim.”
Haim was set to go to trial on February 10 after U.S. district judge David Hittner delayed the proceeding in early December. The judge approved the dismissal. The Justice Department’s Southern District of Texas office was prosecuting the case.
“The fight against the evils he exposed continues,” Burke said, “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.”
On Monday, his first day back in the White House, Trump signed an executive order to end the previous administration’s weaponization of the federal government against perceived political opponents. Throughout the week, Haim hoped the new administration would stay true to its order. He was greatly relieved to hear his case was dismissed on Friday.
“We took on the federal leviathan under the greatest odds possible. We won, we suffered, and we paid the price. But we never gave up and we never gave in,” Haim told NR.
The Biden-era Justice Department accused the surgeon of violating the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) by releasing medical records to a journalist in an effort to expose that Texas Children’s had continued to perform trans procedures on minors after publicly announcing that it had stopped offering so-called gender-affirming care for children. At the time, the defendant was a surgical resident at the Baylor College of Medicine, an institution affiliated with Texas Children’s.
The Houston-based pediatric hospital announced it had stopped offering hormone treatments and trans surgeries for minors after Texas attorney general Ken Paxton issued a legal opinion categorizing such procedures as child abuse. But, as Haim revealed, the hospital continued to perform the procedures for months after it had announced otherwise.
Haim maintained his innocence, arguing that the private information he disclosed to conservative journalist Christopher Rufo was redacted and did not include personally identifiable information. Rufo confirmed Haim’s account.
Haim and his wife, Andrea, underwent a significant amount of lawfare perpetrated by Biden’s Justice Department over the past year and a half, causing them to incur about $2 million in legal expenses. While the prosecution was moving forward, the married couple brought their first child into the world last fall.
“It came at great personal cost. Between the two of us, we have had hundreds of sleepless nights worried that he would go to federal prison for 10 years,” Andrea Haim wrote on X. “We are completely broke. He was forced to leave me and his newborn baby daughter in the hospital an hour after I had an emergency c-section to make a court appearance in Houston.”
“But if you ask either of us, we would do it again in a heartbeat,” she continued. “Because of Eithan, the world is a better place for children, including our daughter. There is no greater gift we can give her than the knowledge that her daddy is a hero.”
The case was dropped about two hours after Senator Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) revealed that he had spoken with leaders in Trump’s Justice Department.
“I . . . strongly urged them to immediately stop the Biden Admin’s malicious prosecution of [Eithan Haim], the brave whistleblower who exposed illegal gender transition surgeries on minors in Texas,” Hawley posted on X. “He should be thanked, not prosecuted.”
The Republican senator celebrated the case’s dismissal in follow-up messages on social media.
The dismissal came just before a Friday deadline, by which the federal prosecutors were ordered to provide the names of the witnesses they intended to call to the stand, among other details. The defendant and his lawyers were supposed to file their initial trial plan on January 29, less than two weeks before the trial date. Now, the jury trial is no longer moving forward.
Haim hopes the second Trump administration will dole out punishment to the Southern District of Texas prosecutors for putting him through the wringer. The practicing surgeon suggested they should be fired, disbarred, or arrested if they are found to have conspired with Texas Children’s or Baylor College to manufacture evidence against him.
Haim believes his case would have set a dangerous precedent for other whistleblowers in his position if he had been convicted. He faced up to ten years in federal prison and a $250,000 maximum fine for the alleged HIPAA violations.
“If we would not have won this case,” he said, “then the door for medical whistleblowers would be closed forever.”
This story has been updated.