Health care worker accused of posting Justice Ginsburg’s medical records denies accessing them

Alexandria, Virginia (CNN) — A former health care worker charged with posting the medical records of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on a message board widely known as a hotbed for hate speech told a federal court on Tuesday that he never accessed the documents and rarely even thought about members of the Supreme Court.

Prosecutors allege that Trent James Russell accessed Ginsburg’s medical records as she was battling cancer and shared them on the message board 4chan in 2019. According to court records, Russell was working for an organ transplant coordinator at the time.

Russell has pleaded not guilty to three counts, including violating federal medical privacy laws.

A defense attorney for Russell cast his client as an apolitical former Army medic who voted for President Barack Obama in 2012 and who had no reason to harm the liberal justice. Russell testified that he and others in his office regularly shared passwords as a way to steer around medical bureaucracy.

“I never shared medical information for anybody except for authorized” reasons, Russell told the jury. “I don’t really think about [Ginsburg] or any of the other justices all that often.”

Prosecutors suggested Russell may have an antisemitic motivation, saying in court that forensic analysts had found an internet search on his computer for the words “dirty Jew.” Russell denied the accusation, telling the jury that someone’s religion mattered to him no more than “the color t-shirt that they wear.”

Law enforcement officials opened the investigation after noticing Ginsburg’s medical records were circulating online and later discovered they had originally been posted on 4chan.

Ginsburg, the second woman to serve on the high court who was widely celebrated on the left, died in 2020.

Her medical records, once posted, prompted a series of explicit messages on 4chan that were critical of Ginsburg as well as conspiracy theories about her health, according to testimony Tuesday.

Details of the case, first reported by The Washington Post, remained under seal for months.

Asked about a computer search during an interview by federal agents while at work in 2019, Russell suggested it was either a mistake or may have been caused because his “cats had run across his keyboard,” according to a court document. In court, Russell said he was making a joke about the cat.

Russell, who lived in Virginia at the time, also told authorities he had shared his hospital log-in information with others, according to court records. He told the jury Tuesday that sharing passwords to access medical records was routine at his company to get around technical problems that he said could slow getting organ donations to patients.

He subsequently moved to Nebraska.

Ginsburg wrestled with serious health complications, including several bouts with cancer. The Supreme Court disclosed that Ginsburg was treated for pancreatic cancer in 2009. And in 2020, the justice disclosed she was being treated with chemotherapy for a recurrence of cancer.

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