Jo Ellis, the transgender Army Black Hawk pilot falsely said to be flying the helicopter that collided with a passenger plane over the Potomac River near Washington, D.C., in January, is suing one of the right-wing commentators who made the allegation.
Ellis filed a defamation suit against Matthew S. Wallace Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Colorado. She is represented by Meg Phelan, legal counsel with the Equality Legal Action Fund.
“I had a unique opportunity to hold someone accountable,” Ellis tells The Advocate.
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A Black Hawk helicopter with three soldiers aboard collided with American Eagle Flight 5342 about half a mile from Washington Reagan National Airport on the evening of January 29, and both aircraft plunged into the Potomac River. The passenger plane was carrying 60 passengers and four crew members. Everyone on both aircraft was killed.
Several posters on social media claimed that Ellis was the Black Hawk pilot and that she intentionally caused the crash, somehow because of her gender identity. She then posted a Facebook video to prove she was alive and had not been the pilot. She has been a member of the Virginia Army National Guard since 2009, and the Department of Defense noted that no one from the Virginia guard unit was in the helicopter.
Ellis’s suit says that Wallace, a resident of Littleton, Colorado, who has more than 2.3 million followers on X (formerly Twitter), “decided to exploit this devastation for clicks and money.”
“Because Defendant is a notorious transphobe who knew an anti-transgender narrative would draw significant attention, he settled on Plaintiff — a transgender Army Black Hawk pilot, who recently learned she might be discharged from the military due to a new Executive Order, as the perfect target,” the lawsuit states. Once he had Plaintiff in his sights, Defendant concocted a destructive and irresponsible defamation campaign against Plaintiff perpetrated on social media.”
“Upon information and belief, Defendant has monetized his primary X profile, @MattWallace888, through his large follower count and engagement. Defendant also maintains three less popular X profiles — @JackWallace888, @MattWallace008, and @Final_StandDoge,” the document continues. “Defendant used his prominent X platform to monetize a false narrative that Plaintiff was not only one of the Army pilots involved in the mid-air collision, but also that she engaged in ‘another trans terror attack’ and intentionally caused the mid-air collision due to her ‘depression’ and ‘Gender Dysphoria.’” He also shared a picture of her. One of his posts received more than 4.6 million views.
It has become common for right-wing extremists to blame trans people, without evidence, for mass shootings and other crimes, supposedly showing that being trans is a mental illness. And shortly after the D.C.-area crash, Donald Trump blamed it, also without evidence, on diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, which his administration claims results in discrimination against white people. The military eventually identified the three service members killed in the crash, and in their photographs, all appear to be white.
Wallace posts anti-Semitic rhetoric as well as spewing hatred of trans people and LGBTQ+ people in general, Ellis and Phelan say. He negatively posted about Ellis converting to Judaism, according to Ellis and her lawyer.
Other posts include his false claims that President Joe Biden fell asleep while meeting with Hawaii fire survivors in 2023, that Biden either had a body double or was being held in a White House bunker during his presidency, and that Biden’s son Hunter was seen sniffing cocaine at the White House. All those claims have been debunked by Snopes.com.
Jo EllisCourtesy Jo Ellis
After Ellis posted her “proof of life” video on Facebook, Wallace created a correction post and then another that attempted “to shift the blame for the original rumor naming Plaintiff away from himself to X user @FakeGayPolitics,” the suit says. He put up a screen shot of the @FakeGayPolitics post and said it “‘seemed credible’ because Plaintiff ‘wrote an article calling out Trump’s trans military ban only a few days ago,’” the suit goes on. “Defendant further stated he disagreed with Plaintiff’s views and intentionally misgendered her.”
“Defendant’s claims are outright and unequivocal falsehoods,” the suit says. “Plaintiff was not flying the Black Hawk helicopter involved in the mid-air collision with a regional jet operated by American Airlines on January 29, 2025. She did not write an article ‘calling out’ President Trump’s trans military ban and she certainly did not engage in ‘another trans terror attack.’”
Ellis is currently continuing to serve in the military because of a court injunction against the trans ban.
Ellis became at one point the second most trending topic on X, and more than 90,000 posts included her name and her picture, according to the suit. “Plaintiff was forced into the public sphere and can no longer remain a private citizen due to Defendant’s lies,” it says. “Given her immediate notoriety and the fact that she is a transgender woman, she fears for the immediate safety of herself and her family on account of the hate inspired against her by Defendant’s lies.”
After Wallace and others claimed Ellis was the Black Hawk pilot, she began to be recognized in public, she tells The Advocate. “I received a lot of hate, especially that week” immediately after the information spread, she says. “It put me and my family at risk.” She hired private security and began carrying a gun.
What she finds even worse is that the false narrative about her eclipsed the tragic story of the crash.
“It’s a tragedy that Matt wanted to distract from with rumors about me,” she says, adding, “I know people who know the victims on that helicopter. The Black Hawk community is very small.”
“We are trying to make this not about Jo but about that crash and what Matt Wallace did,” Phelan says.
Ellis is seeking economic damages, similar to compensatory damages, as reimbursement for the expenses she incurred as a result of Wallace’s postings, as well as exemplary, or punitive damages, which would require the proof that Wallace acted with actual malice — knowing that the information he shared was false. If she wins her suit, the amount will be determined in court. She plans to donate any money she receives to the families of the crash victims.
Wallace does not appear to have commented publicly on the suit, although several media outlets have tried to contact him.
Ellis knows that filing the suit will bring her additional scrutiny, but she says it’s worth it: “I believe in holding people accountable."
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