The first transgender soldier in the United States Army and his wife, a Maryland doctor, were arrested conspiracy charges on Wednesday for for the crime of allegedly attempting to obtain and then send sensitive military medical information to Russia.
According to a Department of Justice’s news release, the eight-count indictment was unsealed Thursday following the arrest of the defendants, Major Jamie Lee Henry and his anesthesiologist wife Anna Gabrielian.
In 2015, the Army authorized Henry’s request to formally alter his name to reflect his new gender choice.
Prior to Henry’s case, identifying as a sex other than the one on one’s birth certificate rendered a soldier unsuitable for military service and would have resulted in dismissal.
Gabrielian worked at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, which is referred to in the indictment as “Medical Institution 1.”
Henry, a doctor, served as a staff internist at Fort Bragg, which houses the headquarters of the United States Army Special Operations Command.
The two are accused of taking patient health records from Johns Hopkins and Fort Bragg and sending them to someone they thought worked for the Russian government.
According to the indictment, they intended to showcase their ability to get secret material and quickly transfer it to Moscow in order to demonstrate their devotion.
The person to whom they wanted to convey the information, however, was an undercover FBI agent.
Gabrielian informed the agent in a secret encounter on August 17 that she was committed to assist Russia’s cause even if it meant losing her job or going to prison.
She set up another meeting with Henry and the agent, who she believed to be working for the Russian government.
That evening, in a hotel room, Henry stated that he was devoted to helping Russia and had even considered joining the Russian army during the invasion of Ukraine.
In order to aid the Russian government, Henry and Gabrielian allegedly offered to collect confidential medical records from the US Army and Johns Hopkins to send to the Russian government.
If convicted in a court of law, the two would be spies may face up to five years in federal prison for conspiracy and up to 10 years for each count of disclosing confidential military medical documents.
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