{"id":828,"date":"2025-04-10T18:29:51","date_gmt":"2025-04-10T18:29:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gogetterlifestylebrand.com\/?p=828"},"modified":"2025-04-14T11:29:00","modified_gmt":"2025-04-14T11:29:00","slug":"transgender-pilot-falsely-linked-to-dc-plane-crash-sues-conservative-influencer-alleging-defamation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gogetterlifestylebrand.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/10\/transgender-pilot-falsely-linked-to-dc-plane-crash-sues-conservative-influencer-alleging-defamation\/","title":{"rendered":"Transgender pilot falsely linked to DC plane crash sues conservative influencer, alleging defamation"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A transgender military helicopter pilot sued\u00a0a conservative social media influencer for alleged defamation on Wednesday, two months after she was falsely\u00a0blamed for a deadly midair collision over the Potomac River in Washington.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jo Ellis, a pilot in the Virginia National Guard, filed the defamation suit<\/a> 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

All 67 people aboard the two aircraft were killed in the crash, the deadliest U.S. aviation disaster in more than 20 years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On Jan. 30, less than 24 hours after the crash, Wallace shared a post from one of his alternative accounts\u00a0that claimed the helicopter pilot was transgender. The post, which Wallace later deleted, included a photo of Ellis, according to the lawsuit.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Wallace made two additional posts linking Ellis to the crash, according to the lawsuit, including one that referenced a Jan. 29 podcast interview<\/a> where Ellis discussed President Trump\u2019s executive order to bar transgender people from serving openly in the military.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On Jan. 31, after learning from friends that she had been falsely connected to the crash,\u00a0Ellis filmed and uploaded a \u201cproof of life\u201d video to her personal Facebook page.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI understand some people have associated me with the crash in D.C., and that is false,\u201d Ellis said in the video<\/a>. \u201cIt is insulting to the families to try to tie this to some sort of political agenda, they don\u2019t deserve that. I don\u2019t deserve this, and I hope that y\u2019all know that I\u2019m alive and well and this should be sufficient for you all to end all the rumors.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Wallace then distanced himself from the claim, according to Wednesday\u2019s lawsuit. He said another account had started the rumor that Ellis\u00a0had been involved in the crash and that the post \u201cseemed credible\u201d because Ellis\u00a0\u201cwrote an article calling out Trump\u2019s trans military ban only a few days ago.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ellis, backed by Equality Legal Action Fund, an LGBTQ legal organization, argued on Wednesday that\u00a0Wallace\u2019s claims \u201care outright and unequivocal falsehoods.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, where Wallace resides, claims he used his platform \u201cto monetize a false narrative that\u00a0[Ellis] was not only one of the Army pilots involved in the mid-air collision, but also that she engaged in \u2018another trans terror attack\u2019 and intentionally caused the mid-air collision due to her \u2018depression\u2019 and \u2018Gender Dysphoria.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u00a0Joel Osteen\u2019s\u00a0megachurch and a high school in suburban Iowa.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In December, former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) falsely suggested<\/a> 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<\/a>, \u201cThe probability of a trans person being violent appears to be vastly higher than non-trans.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the immediate aftermath of the Jan. 29 collision, Trump\u00a0said diversity initiatives<\/a> at the Federal Aviation Administration may be to blame.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A transgender military helicopter pilot sued\u00a0a conservative social media influencer for alleged defamation on Wednesday, two months after she was falsely\u00a0blamed for a deadly midair collision over the Potomac River in Washington.\u00a0 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…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":830,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gogetterlifestylebrand.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/828"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gogetterlifestylebrand.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gogetterlifestylebrand.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gogetterlifestylebrand.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gogetterlifestylebrand.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=828"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gogetterlifestylebrand.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/828\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":829,"href":"https:\/\/gogetterlifestylebrand.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/828\/revisions\/829"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gogetterlifestylebrand.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gogetterlifestylebrand.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gogetterlifestylebrand.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gogetterlifestylebrand.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}