Criminal – Defendant convicted for posting Supreme Court justice’s medical information

Although a man convicted of wrongfully obtaining individually identifiable health information argued that the conviction should be vacated because the screenshot didn’t disclose the precise nature of the justice’s illness or the names of her doctors, this argument was rejected. The screenshot identified the justice by name and disclosed where she was being treated, her arrival and discharge dates and the medical services provided.

Background

Before Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away, someone posted information related to treatment she received at George Washington University Hospital on the internet. An investigation led to Trent Russell, who worked for a company with access to the hospital’s medical records. After trial, a jury convicted Russell of (1) destroying and altering records with the intent to impede, obstruct or influence a criminal investigation and (2) wrongfully obtaining individually identifiable health information.

Suppress

Russell claims that the chief executive officer’s presence at the FBI agent’s interview created an implicit threat that he had to cooperate with the federal agents “as a condition of continued employment.” And he argues that the district court erred by applying a “bright-line rule” that any “threatened loss of employment must be stated explicitly” to render a defendant’s statements involuntary.

But the district court didn’t say that implied threats to employment can never be coercive. It simply found that there was no such threat here. Russell didn’t identify a case where “the mere presence of the employer or the CEO [in a conversation with law enforcement] could be construed as a threat, implicit or explicit.” And after weighing the totality of the circumstances, the court concluded that “there’s nothing in the record that suggests that the interaction between the agents and [Russell] involved coercive police activity, either in the words that were spoken or in their actions.”

The district court made several uncontested factual findings to support this conclusion. Given these findings, the CEO’s presence (without more) doesn’t rise to the level of coercive police activity.

Evidence

During his interview, Russell offered the agents potential explanations about how his credentials may have been used to search for Justice Ginsburg’s information: in addition to blaming his cat, he mused that the searches were typos or that one of his coworkers accessed his login information. But the district court prevented defense counsel from cross-examining agent Chris Lalonde about Russell’s statements, because they were inadmissible hearsay.

Russell argues he wasn’t trying to introduce the statements for their truth. Instead, he only wanted “to show that [Lalonde] received information from Russell that should have led him to take a critical look at [the hospital’s] self-serving conclusions[,] but that the agent failed to do so due to bias.”

This court cannot say that the district court abused its discretion by limiting the cross-examination. The court permitted defense counsel to inquire into Lalonde’s bias without mentioning Russell’s out-of-court statements. It also said that Russell could testify directly about his interview statements during his own case, and then his counsel could recall Lalonde.

Counsel instead chose not to ask Lalonde more questions on cross-examination. And while Russell testified in his own defense, his counsel didn’t recall Lalonde. The decision to “forego” these alternative strategies “rests squarely on [Russell’s] shoulders.”

In any event, any error was harmless. Russell’s lawyer developed his bias argument through other witnesses, and his closing argument emphasized the shortcomings of both the hospital’s internal review and law enforcement’s investigation. And given the weight of other evidence against Russell, the testimony wouldn’t “have significantly changed the jury’s impression” of his guilt.

Acquittal

In Russell’s view, because the screenshot didn’t disclose the precise nature of the justice’s illness or the names of her doctors, it can’t serve as the basis for his conviction.

This court rejects this crabbed view of the statute. The screenshot identified the justice by name and disclosed where she was being treated, her arrival and discharge dates and the medical services provided. This information falls well within the heartland of the conduct the statute is aimed at because it “relates to the past . . . health or condition of an individual, [and] the provision of health care to an individual.” To hold otherwise would flout the spirit of the law.

Affirmed.

United States v. Russell, Case No. 24-4620, April 14, 2026. 4th Cir. (Diaz), from EDVA at Alexandria (Nachmanoff). Charles Burnham for Appellant. Lauren Nicole Beebe for Appellee. VLW 026-2-130. 17 pp.

Full-Text Opinion

VLW 026-2-130
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