Last week, a class-action lawsuit was filed against Vanderbilt University Medical Center. We learned that state Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti’s investigation into VUMC’s transgender care clinic allegedly meant that, when he acquired patient medical records from the hospital, he ... well, I’ll let Steve Cavendish and Connor Daryani of the Nashville Banner tell you:
Under HIPAA, a medical provider may turn over protected health information only if “de-identified information could not reasonably be used.” The suit alleges that Vanderbilt turned over some of the most sensitive information possible, including pictures of genitalia, gender identity unknown to others, private communication with clinicians, sexual history, identity of intimate partners and more.
Let me ask you: If you’re investigating billing issues, what do you need pictures of state employees’ genitals for? If Skrmetti were not the attorney general, if he were back at the Department of Justice, and he learned about some pervert lawyer who had a stash of images of state employees’ genitals that they didn’t know he had, let alone consent to him having them, he would have prosecuted that pervert lawyer. If the pervert lawyer had pressured the employees’ doctors into giving him those pictures, Skrmetti would have had a field day prosecuting this sicko.
I spent a good portion of Saturday afternoon researching Skrmetti, and I can tell you: He prosecuted some evil people, and some of them shared pictures of naked people without their consent, and that was part of the case against them. The case that Skrmetti argued. He knows how damaging it is to people when they learn that images of their genitals are out in the world without their consent. He had witness statements in cases he prosecuted about this very thing.
Skrmetti’s office released a statement back when all we knew was that he had these medical records and not the scope of what is allegedly in them. It reads:
We understand patients are concerned that VUMC produced their records to this Office, especially when those patients received abrupt notice without any context. To reiterate, this investigation is directed solely at VUMC and related providers and not at patients or their families. The records have been and will continue to be held in the strictest confidence, as is our standard practice and required by law. This same process happens in dozens of billing fraud investigations every year.
My God, if we have dozens of billing fraud investigations every year that require doctors to give the state attorney general’s office pictures of people’s genitals, we have some massive — perhaps insurmountable — problems as a state. And who cares if the records are being held in confidence? The issue isn’t that everyone’s cool with the AG’s office having a stash of pictures of naked genitals the bearers of those genitals didn’t consent for them to have as long as the AG’s office is the only place they get looked at. Nobody wants Skrmetti to be looking at their genitals without them knowing it.
And the fact that, according to this suit, Skrmetti's office showed up to VUMC with a list of patients’ records they wanted to see? That makes the assertion that the investigation isn’t directed at patients really hard to believe. How did he even concoct this list? Did he have a staffer flipping through state employees’ social media looking for clues that they might be transgender? Does he have an investigative team posted in state office buildings to follow people into the bathroom? If these people aren’t targets and they’re not victims, why would the goddamn attorney general reportedly have pictures of their genitals?
Again, to reiterate: If Skrmetti learned of a lawyer who had pictures like this that were attained without the consent of the people in the pictures, he would not accept “But I only showed them to people I work with and nobody else” as a mitigating factor in the dude’s favor. How in the world do you find yourself with a stack of pictures of the genitals of non-consenting individuals and think you’re a good guy? How does Skrmetti think his word has any value?
When I started writing this piece, I intended to jokingly make a guess at Skrmetti’s enemies list — Glenn Funk, women who travel out of state, drag queens, trans people — but according to this suit he has an actual list. Like, not a joke — a list of state employees whose lives he was willing to upend and whose medical care he was willing to disrupt.
Who else has access to the list? Skrmetti started investigating VUMC right after Matt Walsh held his Proud Boys/anti-trans rally. The Daily Wire, Walsh’s employer, regularly quotes Skrmetti as if they have an open line to him. And Skrmetti wrote a letter to Merrick Garland in support of the First Amendment rights of people who speak out against health care for transgender teens. Golly, I wonder who that might have been in reference to?
Do you think DOJ Skrmetti, who did genuinely prosecute violent white supremacists, would believe me if I went back in time and told him he was going to carry water for a guy known for heading up a rally attended by white-supremacist Proud Boys? Hell, do you think Harvard Law School Skrmetti would believe me if I told him he was going to be carrying water for some radio shock jock who didn’t even go to college?
But back to my question. Skrmetti allegedly made a list of people who he then targeted for their medical records. He is happy to do the bidding of folks like Matt Walsh. Would he share that list? Would he or his office share with people how to use publicly available records to make such a list? Once he’s decided he’s the arbiter of what of people’s private lives they have to share with him, whether they want to or not and whether they even know it (and let me reiterate — according to his own claims, he is not investigating these people; he just got a hold of pictures of their genitals as a matter of course), what’s keeping him from deciding that he can also share their identities or how to find their identities with others?
Where in this whole business does Skrmetti think he’s acted with such integrity that we should trust him? Skrmetti has outed himself as, at the least, a cruel man who doesn’t care who he hurts in the course of his investigations. How are we as a state supposed to trust that all the red flags he’s throwing up only mean that? This suit says he has files full of state employees' genitals. Our best-case scenario is that he’s only a callous jerk who didn’t stop to consider how his actions would affect his fellow Tennesseans. Our worst-case scenario is that an incredibly powerful person who doesn’t answer to voters has blackmail materials on state employees and a stash of revenge porn he collected on our dime.
