Thread by @BurkeLawTweets

The prosecutors in @eithanhaim’s case are doubling down on their shameless effort to ask the court to censor us and our client on @X. We will continue to zealously represent @EithanHaim's liberty, and now his (and our) First Amendment right to Free Speech.

1/ Specifically, the @TheJusticeDept wants the court to gag @EithanHaim's right to RT these fine patriots who have come to his defense on @X: @EdWhelanEPPC @MikeBenzCyber @RepDanCrenshaw @brianeharrison @jordanbpeterson @LeorSapir @MeritStreet @realchrisrufo @KyleSeraphin -- all of whose tweets the DOJ cited in its motion. @elonmusk

2/ Today, @TheJusticeDept filed a reply supporting its motion for a gag order against our legal team and @EithanHaim. They dispute our charges of government misconduct, saying that we mischaracterize the facts. Yet much like previous censorship efforts by this administration, it is the federal government that is purveying misinformation, and it is all on the judicial record.

3/ The prosecution begins by asserting that the defendant is advancing a “false narrative of government corruption.” But in the very next paragraph, the current prosecutors admit that they don’t actually know what happened until after Dr. Haim was indicted because the lead prosecutor who handled everything has been removed from the case. They cannot even respond to clear instances of misconduct that defense counsel—including multiple former DOJ career prosecutors—witnessed firsthand. And the government’s assertion that the prosecution is trying to “uphold the law” rings hollow because it has not attempted to defend most of HIPAA, completely abandoning the Privacy Rule. The idea that the prosecutors are nobly doing so “in the face of constant public rhetoric” demonstrates yet again that they believe they are entitled to prosecute @EithanHaim without public scrutiny of the immense power they wield.

4/ While the government attempts to identify “inaccuracies and mischaracterizations,” it is merely projecting its own propensity to confuse the truth for lies. One of the very first examples is that the government’s decision to prosecute Dr. Haim for coming forward publicly was not wrong because Dr. Haim “publicly admitted he sourced the records.” Of course, the prosecutors who state this don’t know why the former lead prosecutor indicted Dr. Haim or why she said she did because they weren’t on the case. But the prosecution also has a surprise in store—Dr. Haim never admitted to sourcing the records. Instead, he admitted to revealing the deception of Texas Children’s Hospital, which is First Amendment-protected activity. The new prosecution should be wary when trampling constitutional rights. The former lead prosecutor made clear that Dr. Haim’s real crime was speaking out to the media the first time. And the prosecution also sought to muzzle Dr. Haim at trial until the holes in the first indictment derailed those plans.

5/ The prosecution also denies that it was at least negligent in sponsoring false information to the first grand jury for the first indictment, which painted Dr. Haim as an interloper who sought to harm TCH patients when he had nothing to do with TCH. Yet records proving that this was false were in the government’s own files. They simply ignored that information and went with the first witness that told them what they wanted to hear. Is that not negligent?

6/ The prosecution asserts that there is no prosecutorial misconduct at all. It is unclear if the new prosecutors are excluding the egregious misconduct of the lead prosecutor, but even the things that have occurred on their watch are reprehensible. They are, after all, on their third indictment because they missed serious errors in the last two, and their first order of business once they dropped the lead prosecutor was to seek a gag order to protect themselves from criticism. Dr. Haim and his counsel have not sought to “unfairly taint the jury pool,” they have sought to fairly “color public opinion” to hold the government accountable for its abuses.

7/ While the prosecution tries to make it sound like its gag order is reasonable, it would completely prevent Dr. Haim or his counsel from criticizing the prosecution, no matter how correct the criticism. The prosecution tries to make its case by painting Dr. Haim’s and the defense’s critical tweets as inaccurate. But as the defense already explained in its own filing, all of the public criticism has been richly deserved. Indeed, many of the tweets included pictures from the court’s transcript showing where it was the court, not the defense, that took issue with the government’s shoddy work.

8/ Also like in previous censorship campaigns, the government attempts to use safety concerns to shut down debate. It suggests that the “extreme rhetoric” could harm the career public prosecutors and federal agents who put felons away for a living, even though they have received no threats. Yet the hypocrisy is worse than that. One X post the government complains about is a post by Dr. Haim calling the prosecutors modern day woke aristocrats. But the government omits the context—he was skewering them for the motion for the gag order because the government tried to justify the gag order due to “online bullying” when the prosecution can send armed agents and strip someone of their rights by just an accusation. Now even commenting on the ridiculousness of the government’s censorship attempt is enough to justify censorship in the government’s eyes.

9/ The government’s hypocrisy gets worse. The government has sought to censor Dr. Haim in multiple ways and has filed several documents unnecessarily under seal, including the lead attorney’s motion to withdraw. Yet every time it has filed its indictments, it has included the initials for the minor patients whose records were accessed. Those initials were not on the records Rufo published. The government has done more to harm medical privacy and to expose patients’ medical records than they accuse Dr. Haim of doing.📷

10/ We are as proud as ever to zealously represent @eithanhaim--we defend him in court filings, in our letter to Congress and DOJ, and here on @X--and we look forward to our hearing tomorrow opposing these ridiculous motions.