A transgender pilot is suing a popular right-wing influencer after he falsely connected her to the midair collision that killed 67 people near Reagan National Airport in Arlington, Virginia, in January.
Jo Ellis, a helicopter pilot with the Virginia Army National Guard, filed the defamation lawsuit against social media personality Matt Wallace in a Colorado federal court on Wednesday.
Her attorneys argue that Wallace — who made a series of online posts incorrectly identifying Ellis as the pilot of the U.S. Army Black Hawk chopper involved in the Jan. 29 crash, and suggested the tragedy was a “trans terror attack” — intentionally made the false claims to financially profit off an anti-transgender narrative.
Shortly after the American Airlines jet and Black Hawk helicopter crashed over the Potomac River, Wallace posted on his X account — where he has more than 2 million followers — that he’d learned the Black Hawk pilot was “a transgender,” according to Ellis’ complaint. That post also contained a photo of Ellis.
Wallace deleted this initial post after it went viral, the lawsuit continues, but went on to publish more false information targeting Ellis — including another X post containing her photos, in which he also said a transgender Black Hawk pilot “wrote a long letter about ‘Gender Dysphoria’ and
depression” the day before the collision.
Wallace’s post also alleged Ellis might have been involved in “another trans terror attack.”
The lawsuit goes on to state that about two hours after this post, which garnered 4.8 million views on X, Wallace posted yet another photo of Ellis, captioned, “JUST IN: The
transgender Helicopter pilot who allegedly crashed into the plane was in the process of
converting to Judaism.”
In her complaint, Ellis’ attorneys say Wallace was motivated by a desire to generate “clicks and money” in the crash’s aftermath, and “all he needed was a villain” to blame. Because he “knew an anti-transgender narrative would draw significant attention,” the complaint alleges, he settled on Ellis as a target.
When Ellis found out that Wallace was making these posts, she posted a “proof of life” video to her personal Facebook page. In his reaction to this video, Wallace said in a post that the idea Ellis had been flying the helicopter “‘seemed credible’ because Plaintiff ‘wrote an article calling out Trump’s trans military ban only a few days ago,'” according to the complaint.
“The damage caused to Plaintiff by Defendant was instantaneous and immense,” Ellis’ attorneys argue. “Prior to Defendant’s campaign, Plaintiff was a private citizen who led a private life away from social media and the limelight.”
That all changed on Jan. 31, according to the lawsuit.
“She discovered she was the second most-trending topic in the United States on X with more than 90,000 posts mentioning her name or her likeness,” Ellis’ lawyers said of their client, who was “forced into the public sphere and can no longer remain a private citizen due to [Wallace’s] lies.”
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