In 2015, Major Jamie Lee Henry became a media celebrity by becoming the first known transgender officer in the U.S. Army. On Thursday, Henry was indicted for plotting to hand over secrets to the Russian government.
CNBC reported that:
A U.S. Army major doctor and their physician wife have been charged with a criminal plot to give confidential medical information related to members of the U.S. military and their spouses to the Russian government, court records show. The couple, Major Jamie Lee Henry and anaesthesiologist Anna Gabrielian, were named in a federal indictment unsealed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Baltimore charging them with conspiracy to disclose health information.
The article would go on to mention Henry’s transgender identity that led to a glowing 2015 BuzzFeed profile that led to further publicity. That same year, Henry would appear on MSNBC.com after winning the Dr. Mary Walker Award from Whitman-Walker Health, an award that is named after the first female surgeon in the history of the Army and only female Medal of Honor recipient.
In 2019, when the Trump-era Pentagon put forward a policy on transgender individuals in the military, CBS’s Washington affiliate, WUSA, went to Henry for comment, “I see this memo as a compromise…President Trump didn’t get what he wanted … The Democrats and a lot of LGBT activists have not gotten what they wanted which is allowing people who have gotten treatment for their gender dysphoria to be able to enter the military.”
Other outlets made sure to include Henry in “a history of transgender service in the armed forces” slideshows.
The indictment further adds that the couple was not motivated by money or blackmail, but politics. They were pro-Russia and blamed the United States for the war in Ukraine.
The lesson here for the media is not to treat every left-wing culture warrior or overhyping people for simply being the first to person to check a demographic box in a certain field. Otherwise, you may end up promoting a literal Russian asset while claiming also claiming Trump and his supporters are the Russian assets.