Well, to be fair, these are allegations made in the indictment, and until the discovery phase, no one but the prosecutors has access to the evidence. I have stopped using "alleged" in everything I write. So mea culpa on that point.
Of course, it is possible that this aspect of the indictment is entirely baseless. In that case, the prosecu…
Well, to be fair, these are allegations made in the indictment, and until the discovery phase, no one but the prosecutors has access to the evidence. I have stopped using "alleged" in everything I write. So mea culpa on that point.
Of course, it is possible that this aspect of the indictment is entirely baseless. In that case, the prosecutors will be guilty of gross prosecutorial misconduct. That seems highly unlikely to me. The evidence would not depend on witnesses who may be faulty but on hard documentation that would have been presented to the grand jury. And the DOJ has a conviction rate of more than 99%. So theoretically possible, yes. But very, very unlikely.
What is really beyond dispute is that he accessed records for patients not under his care. If they were his patients, then he would have to have been performing the surgeries himself. He would be telling on himself. That´s not the way that Rufo reported it; he claimed that it was the gender clinic, not Haim that was providing the unethical care. And there is no question that if they were not his patients that this is a HIPAA violation.
The defense Rufo is making on his behalf is that the patient information was redacted. But this is a red herring and in fact completely irrelevant to the indictment (which anyone can read for themself). Accessing the information was the HIPAA violation. For Rufo to claim that the redactions are relevant is either willfullly ignorant or blatantly dishonest.
You can choose to doubt the indictment, but Rufo and Haim have their own credibility problems.
Well, to be fair, these are allegations made in the indictment, and until the discovery phase, no one but the prosecutors has access to the evidence. I have stopped using "alleged" in everything I write. So mea culpa on that point.
Of course, it is possible that this aspect of the indictment is entirely baseless. In that case, the prosecutors will be guilty of gross prosecutorial misconduct. That seems highly unlikely to me. The evidence would not depend on witnesses who may be faulty but on hard documentation that would have been presented to the grand jury. And the DOJ has a conviction rate of more than 99%. So theoretically possible, yes. But very, very unlikely.
What is really beyond dispute is that he accessed records for patients not under his care. If they were his patients, then he would have to have been performing the surgeries himself. He would be telling on himself. That´s not the way that Rufo reported it; he claimed that it was the gender clinic, not Haim that was providing the unethical care. And there is no question that if they were not his patients that this is a HIPAA violation.
The defense Rufo is making on his behalf is that the patient information was redacted. But this is a red herring and in fact completely irrelevant to the indictment (which anyone can read for themself). Accessing the information was the HIPAA violation. For Rufo to claim that the redactions are relevant is either willfullly ignorant or blatantly dishonest.
You can choose to doubt the indictment, but Rufo and Haim have their own credibility problems.