The Republican-controlled House Judiciary Committee requested testimony this week from Tina Ansari, the former lead prosecutor of a now-dismissed case targeting Dr. Eithan Haim for exposing Texas Children’s Hospital’s secretive transgender procedures on minors.
Representatives Jim Jordan (R., Ohio) and Chip Roy (R., Texas) sent a letter to Ansari on Thursday, inviting the Department of Justice official to appear for a hearing next month and asking her to confirm her appearance as soon as possible. Jordan oversees House Judiciary, and Roy leads the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government. The hearing is scheduled for April 9.
“As the Subcommittee examines this matter to inform potential legislative reforms, it must first understand the nature of this prosecution, and you, as the primary prosecutor on the case, are uniquely positioned to advance the Committee’s oversight,” the letter reads.
The DOJ withdrew Ansari from the case last fall after Haim’s defense attorneys uncovered that she and her family exhibited “substantial financial and political ties” to Texas Children’s Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine, posing an unethical conflict of interest.
Ansari’s family, for example, runs a coffee-roaster business that serves Houston’s extensive hospital system. Furthermore, her brother and aunt co-sponsored fundraising events for Texas Children’s Hospital last year while Ansari pursued the case. These relationships called Ansari’s impartiality into question.
Jordan and Roy hope to get answers from the Biden DOJ attorney on her departure from the case, among other details.
“You were the lead prosecutor on Dr. Haim’s case. You allegedly were removed from the case for failing to report an enormous conflict of interest stemming from the substantial financial and political ties your close family members had to TCH. Your family members allegedly attended and cosponsored fundraising events for TCH, yet you apparently did not disclose this relationship at the beginning of the case,” the Republican lawmakers wrote to Ansari.
“This lack of candor and apparent conflict of interest raises further concerns around DOJ’s weaponization against Dr. Haim for blowing the whistle on TCH.”
Earlier this month, Jordan sent a separate letter asking U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to schedule seven DOJ officials, including Ansari, for congressional testimony on the Biden administration’s weaponization of the DOJ. Ansari remains employed by the department, according to the letter.
During President Donald Trump’s first week back in office in January, DOJ leadership permanently dismissed the federal case against Haim. Because the prosecution’s case was riddled with legal and factual errors from the beginning, two superseding indictments followed the original indictment.
In 2023, Haim discovered Texas Children’s Hospital was secretly performing transgender medical procedures in violation of Texas law after it had supposedly ended them. Taking it upon himself to blow the whistle, he disclosed carefully redacted medical records showing that physicians at the Houston-based hospital were surgically inserting hormonal devices into gender-dysphoric pediatric patients. No individually identifiable health information was unethically revealed, contrary to the Biden DOJ’s claims.
Haim faced four charges for allegedly violating the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), a federal law that protects patients’ health information.
The surgeon was completing his residency at Baylor College, a school affiliated with Texas Children’s Hospital, when he blew the whistle.
Haim, who pleaded not guilty to the charges and maintained his innocence in spite of mounting pressure from the Biden administration, could have faced up to ten years in prison and a $250,000 maximum fine for the alleged HIPAA violations. Fortunately for him, the case was dismissed before it could proceed to trial.
Haim relished the news that Congress asked Ansari to appear for a hearing, hoping she will soon be held accountable for the politically driven prosecution.
“They were probably so confident I would be scared, weak, and intimidated into taking a plea deal,” he posted on X. “But they knocked on the wrong door. The hunted now become the hunters.”