The doctor targeted by the Biden administration for blowing the whistle on transgender surgeries that were secretly being performed by Texas Children’s Hospital was formally indicted with federal charges this week.
Eithan Haim, who revealed himself as the whistleblower earlier this year in an interview with The Daily Wire, says three armed agents arrived at his door early Tuesday to inform him that he’s been charged with four felonies. The charges are related to alleged HIPAA violations from when Haim, as a resident of Texas Children’s Hospital, was performing so-called “gender-affirming” procedures on minors even as it publicly declared that all such activity had been halted.
Haim says there is still uncertainty about what exactly he’s being charged with — he’s been ordered to appear in court next Monday where his legal team expects to learn the extent of the charges. He has long maintained that he committed no crimes, and is being politically targeted.
“I refuse to back down or to be silenced,” Haim, a practicing surgeon in Texas, posted on social media Thursday night. “But to win, we enter the arena. For us that’s federal court.”
In January, Haim told The Daily Wire that he had no regrets about coming forward to expose the transgender surgeries, saying it was his “responsibility as a doctor.”
“It’s my responsibility as a doctor, as a physician, to expose this to the public,” Haim said. “If I don’t, then this abuse can continue. I knew that future generations, like my children, would never be able to forgive me if they knew I had the chance to do something and I decided to stay silent.”
“It requires average, everyday doctors to stand up and speak out against things like this,” he said.
The indictment was first reported by journalist Christopher Rufo, who was also the journalist who reported on Haim’s initial whistleblower claims. Rufo says nothing shared with him would have constituted a HIPAA violation.
“For my own part, I can confirm that nothing in the information provided to me identified any individual; all the documents were, in fact, carefully redacted,” Rufo said.
Haim initially alerted last June, on the day of his graduation from his residency, that he was the target of an investigation by Biden’s Department of Justice, according to a target letter obtained by The Daily Wire.
Haim in January said the federal prosecution of him is political, and was determined not to back down to the federal government.
“Why should I be intimidated into silence when what we exposed was voted to become illegal, and I had not violated any privacy laws?” Haim said. “For me, it’s obvious that this is a political investigation in order to prevent this from happening at other hospitals that might be lying to the public about the existence of their programs.”
Since coming forward, Haim has raised more than $289,000 for his legal defense.
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