US federal prosecutors have filed criminal charges against a surgeon who revealed that a Texas hospital was continuing to perform sex-change procedures on children – in violation of state law – after claiming that it had shut down the program.
Dr. Eithan Haim was indicted earlier this week by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) on four felony charges for allegedly violating a patient-privacy law. US President Joe Biden’s administration had been threatening Haim with prosecution since last year, after the physician leaked documents to a journalist showing that Texas Children’s Hospital was still providing sex-change surgeries and hormone therapies to minors as young as 11.
“They wanted to intimidate me into silence using every technique the federal leviathan had at their disposal, but they failed,” Haim said on Thursday in an X (formerly Twitter) post. “The only way to lose is to submit to corruption. It’s time to fight back harder than ever!”
Haim is scheduled to make his first court appearance later this month. An online fundraising campaign for his legal defense fund had raised nearly $350,000 toward a $500,000 goal as of Friday afternoon.
The controversy goes back to May 2023, when Haim blew the whistle on secret sex-change procedures at Texas Children’s. The Houston hospital had claimed that its gender clinic was shut down, following a warning by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that “gender-affirming care” for kids could be deemed a form of child abuse under state law.
The documents leaked by Haim in 2023 revealed that just three days after the hospital’s statement was issued in March 2022, a young girl experiencing gender dysphoria was implanted with a hormone device. The pace of gender procedures only increased thereafter, according to Haim. Texas Children’s is one of the largest pediatric hospitals in the US.
A US magazine called City Journal published an article based on the leak in May 2023. That same week, the Texas Legislature reacted by passing a new law confirming that sex-change procedures for minors are banned in the state. Rufo insisted that none of the documents provided to him by Haim included any personal information about patients at the hospital. The surgeon said he did not identify any of the children whose procedures were revealed.
Haim said four “heavily armed” federal agents showed up at his door on Tuesday morning to inform him of the felony charges and deliver a summons to appear in court.
US author and conservative filmmaker Mike Cernovich said the Biden administration is going after a whistleblower who exposed “experiments on children.” He added, “You can’t make this up – pure evil.”