The Department of Justice is still pursuing charges against a Texas doctor who exposed transgender operations on kids. He told The Federalist he could face jail time in just days and pled with President Donald Trump to stop the lawfare.
“This case needs to be dropped with prejudice because this illegal application of HIPAA will destroy the medical profession,” the whistleblower, Eithan Haim, told The Federalist. “Not only that but the prosecutors and FBI agents involved need to be investigated for potential criminal abuse of power.”
Haim, a Dallas-area doctor, exposed Texas Children’s Hospital in May 2023 for performing transgender procedures on children as young as 11. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton had classified the operations as “child abuse,” and TCH lied about no longer providing them. But Haim exposed TCH to conservative activist Christopher Rufo for continuing these procedures. The next day, the Texas state Senate voted to ban the practice, and Paxton launched multiple investigations into the hospital.
Starting last year, President Joe Biden’s DOJ pressed charges against Haim. Though President Donald Trump has taken office and ordered an end to federal “weaponization,” the DOJ is continuing to persecute the doctor for exposing the secret child mutilation.
A judge has placed a de-facto gag order on the doctor and said if he violates it, he could be held in jail until trial. Haim told The Federalist he could “possibly” face jail time in a matter of days for alleged “contempt.”
“These people have proven themselves to be shameless, absolutely shameless. They have a complete and utter disregard for law and order,” Haim said. “They’re willing to do anything to prosecute the people they don’t like.”
The doctor posted on Wednesday that he can “no longer afford to stay silent” as he approaches federal trial in February. He said the “weaponized prosecution is being accelerated behind closed doors in direct violation of the President’s Executive Order.”
“The crimes they are charging me with are utter fabrications — nothing less than dispatches from a fantasy world,” Haim wrote. “The Trump administration took office a few days ago and issued an Executive Order to end the weaponization of the DOJ against its own citizens. But I can assure you that today that weaponization is just as alive as it was January 19th, 2025.”
Crushing Dissent
The month after Haim — then a resident at the Baylor College of Medicine — exposed the secret transgender procedures on children, federal agents came to his door.
“They sent agents to my home on the day of my graduation, the most important day of my life, like two hours before the ceremony,” Haim said. “They were sending agents in order to use the importance of my accomplishments — what that day meant — as the means of their extortion.”
They served him with a letter informing he was a “potential target” of a “criminal investigation.”
Vanessa Sivadge — an RN at TCH — corroborated Haim’s story to Rufo. Haim said agents showed up at her house in July 2023, though the video was not released until June 2024.
“They intimidated her, they threatened her. They’re like, ‘We have to find out who this other whistleblower is,’” Haim said. “But they already knew who I was.”
In January 2024, Haim went public. And in June of that year, Sivadge followed — alleging that the hospital committed Medicaid fraud to pay for child transgender procedures.
Also in June, the DOJ indicted Haim. The indictment accused Haim of “obtaining protected individual health information for patients that were not under his care and without authorization” — and said he could face up to 10 years in prison.
Conflicts of Interest
Tina Ansari, assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Texas, prosecuted Haim. She was ultimately forced to step down from the case in November due to various conflicts of interest.
Tina Ansari’s conflicts of interest. Courtesy of Eithan Haim
Image CreditScreenshot
Ansari has close family ties to TCH, the entity named as the victim in Haim’s case. As the lawfare was underway, her brother Ali Ansari and her aunt Sima Ladjevardian sponsored multiple fundraisers for the hospital.
The prosecutor’s family has various Democrat political ties. Her aunt Sima unsuccessfully ran as a Democrat against Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw in 2020. Sima and her husband, Masoud, hosted a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton in 2015 — which Tina’s brother Ali attended (he was even noted as a “classmate and friend” of Chelsea Clinton).
After these revelations — and Tina Ansari’s law license lapsed during the proceedings — she stepped down and was replaced by Assistant U.S. Attorney Jessica Feinstein, who has donated to a Democrat campaign in the past.
Incompetent Lawfare
The DOJ has refiled its indictment against Haim twice due to serious errors.
Prosecutors initially claimed Haim used “false pretenses” to access patients’ medical records. They said he “emailed an administrator at TCH urgently requesting that his login credentials be restored so he could access ‘operative cases’ he was ‘covering.’ This was a lie.”
But prosecutors should have known Haim had authorized access to the systems, as he was operating on an adult patient in the hospital at the time — as revealed in the DOJ’s own discovery. TCH staff even admitted Haim had authorized access to the system.
Image CreditScreenshot
But the FBI still pushed the claim that “an asteroid would have to strike Galveston Bay” for Haim to have authorized access. Prosecutors were ultimately forced to admit they “did not knowingly provide false evidence to the grand jury” (emphasis added).
In October, the DOJ doubled down with its second indictment — making adjustments to the first, suggesting prosecutors knew their case was weak. One change was in the language of Haim’s charges, from “obtain and/or wrongfully disclose” patient information to “obtain and/or use” patient information. But the judge called out Ansari, as this vague language is found nowhere in the law.
The second indictment included other mistakes, such as citing a nonexistent “subchapter XL.” Haim pointed out other gaping issues.
When Feinstein replaced Ansari as lead prosecutor, the DOJ cleaned up the indictment and refiled again. Presumably because Haim embarrassed federal prosecutors for their past shortcomings online, they sought a gag order — which the judge declined to formally issue, but with a warning that “similar conduct” could land him in jail.
Uncertain Future
Haim told The Federalist he expects DOJ prosecutors to take action soon, possibly seeking to jail him in the coming days.
Alamdar S. Hamdani, the former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas who oversaw much of this case, left office shortly before Trump’s inauguration. But one of his long-time top officials, Jennifer Lowery, has taken his place.
It remains unclear whether Trump’s administration will intervene in Haim’s case to enforce his executive order and “ensure accountability for the previous administration’s weaponization of the Federal Government against the American people.”
“The priorities have to be the people who are in prison … those people have to be taken care of first. I totally understand they’re a priority,” Haim said. “But behind the scenes, the DOJ is accelerating this case to bleed me dry in order to pressure me to take their bullsh-t plea deal.”
Logan Washburn is a staff writer covering election integrity. He is a spring 2025 fellow of The College Fix. He graduated from Hillsdale College, served as Christopher Rufo’s editorial assistant, and has bylines in The Wall Street Journal, The Tennessean, and The Daily Caller. Logan is from Central Oregon but now lives in rural Michigan.
