Trial Update: Prosecutors say couple could have given President Biden’s medical records to Russia

The trial of Dr. Jamie Lee Henry and his wife Dr. Anna Gabrielian started Tuesday in Baltimore. Both are accused of offering to use their positions to spy for Russia and to hand over private medical information on US officials and military personnel.

Dr. Jamie Lee Henry was both a doctor and an Army major with a secret security clearance. Prosecutors have said during the trial that it was possible he could have handed the Russians Joe Biden’s medical records.

Prosecutors alleged the couple could potentially provide the Russian government access to President Biden’s medical records, among other high-profile patients, in systems accessible online.

The government said the doctors “understood the risks they were taking” and were willing to “boldly wave goodbye to the United States” and go to Russia before they were caught.

It was Dr. Gabrielian who initially reached out to the Russian Embassy offering medical help shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Gabrielian was born in Russia but moved to the US as a child. She was subsequently contacted by someone who she thought might be working for the FSB but who was in fact an undercover FBI agent. Gabrielian, Henry and the undercover agent all met at a hotel where everything that was said was recorded. Jurors in the case have been watching parts of those recordings since Tuesday.

Video played for jurors shows Johns Hopkins anesthesiologist Anna Gabrielian inside a hotel room with her laptop open, accessing the confidential medical files of her patients for a foreign government, according to prosecutors.

Gabrielian shows the woman she believes is a Russian operative everything on the screen including names, medical conditions, phone numbers and addresses…

Dr. Jamie Lee Henry, an Army Major who was nearing the end of his active-duty service, was trying to access the medical records of patients on his computer but was getting frustrated with technical difficulties. He then presented a notebook to the agent that contained medical information on patients, according to federal prosecutors.

Just based on the HIPAA violations both of them are almost certainly going to lose their medical licenses and face jail time. But the remaining issue is whether or not they’ll also do time for spying for Russia. Their attorney claims they were entrapped. The initially reached out to the Russian Embassy with nothing but good will for mankind and then, allegedly, became afraid their contact (the FBI agent) would harm Gabrielian’s relatives in Russia if she didn’t deliver medical records. I’m not saying this deserves much credence or makes any sense but that’s basically their defense.

As I mentioned earlier this week, the most curious part of this whole trial to me is that Dr. Jamie Lee Henry, who made big news as the first trans officer in the Army back in 2015, is suddenly sporting a beard and wearing men’s clothes to court. When did this happen? No one will say. There’s a paragraph in this CBS report that doesn’t even make sense unless you know the backstory.

Jurors later watched video of Gabrielian offer her military spouse identification card to the undercover agent, because the two had similar features and it would give Russia access to military bases.

They also heard Dr. Henry discuss treating a close relative of President Biden and a former senator.

The undercover agent testified in disguise and used a pseudonym. Because of security concerns, members of the public and media could only listen to audio of her voice from a separate courtroom on a different floor of the courthouse and had to relinquish their phones and smart watches before entering the proceedings.

CBS doesn’t tell you anything about the undercover agent but this report from a local Baltimore station identifies the agent as a woman. “During her testimony, the government played tapes she recorded of her meetings with the co-defendants…” So when Gabrielian was offering the female agent her husband’s ID card and saying they had similar features, presumably that’s because the ID card showed Dr. Henry dressed as a woman. Either that or the FBI agent is also trans.

Anyway, Henry’s defense attorney also used his/her status to claim the allegations must be false. “His lawyer argued because of Russia’s poor record on LGBTQ+ rights, ‘It is ludicrous [Henry] wanted to help the Russian government.’” This makes it sound as if his attorney is saying he/she is still trans but the court documents all use male pronouns for Dr. Henry and, as mentioned above, he’s been dressing and appearing as a male in court every day, including a full beard. Is trans something you can just take a break from when you want? It would be great if one of the major outlets covering the trial would address this but so far it is barely getting mentioned at all with the exception of this CBS story.