Army National Guard UH-60 Black Hawk pilot Jo Ellis listened attentively to the breaking news the evening of Jan. 29 that a helicopter had struck an American Airlines jet over the Potomac River near Washington, D.C., killing all aboard both aircraft.
The next day, Ellis, who is transgender, was alarmed to hear Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth say that diversity initiatives had undermined air safety at the Pentagon, hinting that they had played a role in the midair collision.
But it wasn’t until the following day, when Ellis began receiving text messages from friends asking whether she was all right, that she learned she had been named by Matthew Wallace, a cryptocurrency influencer with 2.3 million followers on the social media platform X, as the pilot. Wallace posted photos of her and said Ellis was driven by a diagnosis of gender dysphoria to conduct what he called a possible “trans terror attack.”
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“My life turned upside down that morning,” Ellis, an Iraq War veteran and chief warrant officer 2 who has served in the Virginia National Guard for nearly 16 years, said during an interview Thursday.
Ellis debated how to respond. She posted a “proof of life” video on her Facebook page expressing condolences to the victims’ families, adding that the collision should not be used to further political agendas.
But when her family needed a security detail for protection and she began feeling uncomfortable leaving the house without a personal firearm, she decided to take Wallace to court.
On April 9, Ellis filed a defamation suit alleging Wallace exploited the “devastation for clicks and money,” and to do so, “concocted a destructive and irresponsible defamation campaign” against Ellis on social media.
Wallace deleted his posts after Ellis’s Facebook testimony began circulating, according to court documents. But Ellis told Military.com that she believes that unfounded online attacks need to be challenged.
“Loose fingers on keyboards is having a real impact to many people’s lives, and I don’t know what the answer is, so the only answer I have is filing a lawsuit for defamation,” Ellis said.
Freedom of speech is a protected constitutional right. But libel — written statements that damage a person’s reputation — can be challenged under the law.
In recent years, victims of cyberlibel have won several high-profile lawsuits, including author E. Jean Carroll, who sued President Donald Trump over statements he made that she lied about a sexual assault by Trump to boost book sales, and two Georgia election workers who were accused by attorney and presidential adviser Rudy Guiliani of engaging in election fraud.
Carroll was awarded $83.3 million in her defamation lawsuit; Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss, won $148 million in their case against Giuliani.
Those wins aside, Meg Phelan, the attorney representing Ellis, said defamation cases are difficult, but she believes Ellis makes a strong argument.
“We’re going to fight as hard as we can against this in court,” said Phelan, an attorney for the Equality Legal Action Fund, a largely volunteer group of attorneys and advocates who represent the LGBTQ+ community. “Our plan is just to fight and to use the law, which we believe is on our side.”
Attempts to reach Wallace were unsuccessful. As of Friday, he had not yet named an attorney, according to court records.
The Black Hawk crew members killed in the January collision were Capt. Rebecca Lobach, 28, of Durham, North Carolina; Chief Warrant Officer Andrew Eaves, 39, of Great Mills, Maryland; and Staff Sgt. Ryan O’Hara, 28, of Lilburn, Georgia. All three were with Bravo Company, 12th Aviation Battalion, out of Fort Belvoir, Virginia.
The Army initially withheld Lobach’s name at the request of the family amid online speculation over her identity.
Sixty-four people on the regional aircraft operating for American Airlines were killed.
Ellis said she has relied strongly on Army resiliency training, which she described as “effective,” to endure the onslaught of messages she has received and the discomfiting looks she gets from strangers — attention she has been accustomed to, given that she is a tall transgender woman, but now is more worrisome after the negativity created by Wallace.
“As someone who’s been to Iraq, who’s been shot at, it’s a little bit different when the whole world has a magnifying glass on you,” Ellis said. “It’s just overwhelming. [But] I’m going to keep showing up and keep serving my country, because I love my country and I love my state, and that’s ultimately what I want to do.”
Ellis said she plans to donate any proceeds she is awarded in the case to the families of those who were killed.
“Matt took away from the tragedy by making it about me that weekend, and so he needs to be held accountable,” she said. “The families of the crash victims don’t deserve this.”
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