Transgender pilot falsely linked to DC plane crash sues conservative influencer, alleging defamation
A transgender military helicopter pilot sued a conservative social media influencer for alleged defamation on Wednesday, two months after she was falsely blamed for a deadly midair collision over the Potomac River in Washington.
Jo Ellis, a pilot in the Virginia National Guard, filed the defamation suit against Matt Wallace, a cryptocurrency investor and influencer on the social platform X. In January, Wallace falsely claimed on his X account, where he has 2.2 million followers, that Ellis had been operating the Black Hawk helicopter that collided with a passenger jet on Jan. 29.
All 67 people aboard the two aircraft were killed in the crash, the deadliest U.S. aviation disaster in more than 20 years.
On Jan. 30, less than 24 hours after the crash, Wallace shared a post from one of his alternative accounts that claimed the helicopter pilot was transgender. The post, which Wallace later deleted, included a photo of Ellis, according to the lawsuit.
Wallace made two additional posts linking Ellis to the crash, according to the lawsuit, including one that referenced a Jan. 29 podcast interview where Ellis discussed President Trump’s executive order to bar transgender people from serving openly in the military.
On Jan. 31, after learning from friends that she had been falsely connected to the crash, Ellis filmed and uploaded a “proof of life” video to her personal Facebook page.
“I understand some people have associated me with the crash in D.C., and that is false,” Ellis said in the video. “It is insulting to the families to try to tie this to some sort of political agenda, they don’t deserve that. I don’t deserve this, and I hope that y’all know that I’m alive and well and this should be sufficient for you all to end all the rumors.”
Wallace then distanced himself from the claim, according to Wednesday’s lawsuit. He said another account had started the rumor that Ellis had been involved in the crash and that the post “seemed credible” because Ellis “wrote an article calling out Trump’s trans military ban only a few days ago.”
Ellis, backed by Equality Legal Action Fund, an LGBTQ legal organization, argued on Wednesday that Wallace’s claims “are outright and unequivocal falsehoods.”
Her lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, where Wallace resides, claims he used his platform “to monetize a false narrative that [Ellis] was not only one of the Army pilots involved in the mid-air collision, but also that she engaged in ‘another trans terror attack’ and intentionally caused the mid-air collision due to her ‘depression’ and ‘Gender Dysphoria.’”
Far-right social media personalities and conservative provocateurs in recent years have been quick to claim, often without evidence, that transgender people are to blame for devastating acts of violence, including mass shootings at a Texas elementary school, celebrity pastor Joel Osteen’s megachurch and a high school in suburban Iowa.
In December, former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) falsely suggested a transgender student carried out a shooting at a Wisconsin private school, and tech billionaire Elon Musk, the owner of the social platform X and a close ally of President Trump, wrote in a recent social media post, “The probability of a trans person being violent appears to be vastly higher than non-trans.”
In the immediate aftermath of the Jan. 29 collision, Trump said diversity initiatives at the Federal Aviation Administration may be to blame.