Jo Ellis has served over 15 years in the Virginia Army National Guard. She is currently a Chief Warrant Officer 2 UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter pilot. Plaintiff joined the Virginia Army National Guard in 2009 as a helicopter mechanic. In 2011, Plaintiff deployed to Iraq and earned an Air Medal for serving as a helicopter door gunner. In 2015, Plaintiff served in reserve operations in Guatemala, and she subsequently deployed to Kuwait in 2016. She is, in short, a hero. He also happens to be transgender.
Matthew Wallace is a cryptocurrency investor and YouTube personality with over 2.3 million followers on X, formerly known as "Twitter." He is also a liar and a coward. The lives of Ms. Ellis and Wallace intersected following the January 29 collision of an Army UH-60L Black Hawk helicopter and a regional jet operating as Flight 5342 for American Airlines. 67 people aboard both aircraft perished in this accident, which was the first major commercial passenger flight accident in the United States in nearly 16 years.
In the wake of the accident, President Trump irresponsibly cited FAA DEI policies as a potential cause for the crash. Wallace, a transphobe, picked up on this nonsense and ran with it. On January 30, Wallace posted the following on his X account, with a picture of Ms. Ellis: "MY BROTHER @JackWallace888 JUST FOUND OUT THE HELICOPTER PILOT WAS A TRANSGENDER \ THEY AREN'T GOING TO BE ABLE TO HIDE THIS MUCH LONGER !!"
On January 31, Wallace was back at it, posting another photo of Ms. Ellis with this caption: " JUST IN: The transgender Helicopter pilot who allegedly crashed into the plane was in the process of converting to Judaism." Why stop at being a transphobe when you can be anti-Semitic too? Later that day, Wallace posted this: "A transgender Black Hawk helicopter pilot for the military wrote a long letter about 'Gender Dysphoria' and depression 1 day before the fatal crash! / What happened may have been another trans terror attack…"
Not surprisingly, in the wake of Wallace's falsehoods, Ms. Ellis was subjected to a torrent of nasty social media messages and piling on comments on X. One said, for example, "the only thing this sick s.o.b. was prove how mentally ill trans people are."
Ms. Ellis did not pilot the helicopter. She did not write a letter the day before the crash. Wallace made this stuff up. As the lawyer for Ms. Ellis states in the lawsuit, "because [Wallace] is a notorious transphobe who knew an anti-transgender narrative would draw significant attention, he settled on [Ms. Ellis]–a transgender Army Black Hawk pilot, who recently learned she might be discharged from the military due to a new Executive Order, as the perfect target. Once he had [Ms. Ellis] in his sights, [Wallace] concocted a destructive and irresponsible defamation campaign against [Ms. Ellis] perpetrated on social media."
Wallace is part of a growing group of online vigilantes. Wallace and those like him concoct theories to support their narratives and then post them as fact. It is easy enough to do, as it requires no investigation, fact checking or verification. All it really takes is an imagination and the lack of a conscience. I am a staunch defender of the First Amendment, but a ruling against Wallace will not in any way lessen the protections the First Amendment affords. I'll be rooting for Ms. Ellis.
