Twitter Still Hasn’t Removed Transphobic Posts Claiming Jo Ellis Was 3rd Pilot in Black Hawk Crash
“Calling me a murderer is apparently not a violation of X rules," the transgender pilot told the Guardian about being falsely accused of the January 29 collision.
On January 31, two days after a military helicopter collided with a commercial flight over the Potomac River, Jo Ellis, a transgender Black Hawk pilot, received a text message from a friend before 5 a.m. He told her a random Facebook account had begun commenting on all of his public posts, wondering whether he was friends with Ellis, “the one that killed those people in the crash.” Assuming it was only a bot, she moved on. Unfortunately, it was a harbinger of a witch hunt—one that Ellis spoke about in a new interview published by the Guardian on Tuesday.
In the immediate aftermath of the crash that killed 67 people, two of the deceased helicopter pilots were identified, but the family of the third pilot initially chose to keep her name from the public. So, when President Trump almost immediately blamed the tragedy on diversity initiatives, Ellis was quickly misidentified as the pilot.
One day before the collision, Ellis—a member of the Virginia National Guard since 2009—wrote an article about being trans published by Smerconish, an online publication created by longtime journalist Michael Smerconish. In the piece, she detailed the gender dysphoria she’s experienced for much of her life. It wasn’t until after the pandemic, however, that she told her command that she would begin transitioning. After paying for all gender-affirming medical care out of pocket, she came out to her unit in 2024 to “overwhelming support.” The piece, she thinks, put a target on her back.
Numerous blue-check X accounts claimed the pilot of the helicopter that hit a plane in DC was transgender.
“Once I put that article out, I became collateral damage, just like so many other trans people that are being unnecessarily targeted,” Ellis told the Guardian. Hours after her friend texted her about the Facebook account, a Pakistan-based publication falsely reported Ellis as the third pilot. Then, the Daily Mail called and asked if Ellis was still alive.
“And that’s when it kind of sunk in,” she said. “And I was like, oh, this is big. This is not some corner of the internet saying something ridiculous.”
Unsurprisingly, the most ridiculous—and exceedingly damaging—things were being said by people with platforms. Thanks to conservative talking heads and transphobic edge lords, Ellis’ name began trending on Twitter. Ann Coulter, for instance, shared a post claiming Ellis was the pilot. Another account commented that the crash might be “another trans terror attack.” Earlier that week, Trump signed multiple executive orders banning transgender military members—leading some online conspiracists to theorize that the collision wasn’t an accident.
To counteract the misinformation, Ellis decided to post a video on Facebook to prove she was, in fact, alive.
“It is insulting to the families to try to tie this to some sort of political agenda,” she said. “They don’t deserve that. I don’t deserve this. And I hope that you all know that I am alive and well, and this should be sufficient for you all to end all the rumors.”
The backlash was swift. After posting the video, Ellis arranged armed security and left her home for fear that her family’s safety might be at risk. Some accounts messaged to say she was “mentally ill” and shouldn’t be in the military. Others said they wished she was on the helicopter instead. The lion’s share of sentiment was just blatant transphobia, she said. In an interview with CNN, published on February 1, she told Smerconish that she’s heard directly from other trans people who have been similarly targeted since Trump’s trans bans.
Ultimately, her video stopped the disinformation train and the backlash tapered off. “All I had to do was say I’m alive, and that kind of broke the whole rumor,” she said. Since then, she told the Guardian, that she’s tried to report the posts to no avail. “Calling me a murderer is apparently not a violation of X rules.”
How convenient that the two platforms responsible for the targeting are owned by the two billionaires in Trump’s back pockets! Still, Ellis said she doesn’t regret speaking out and that her colleagues in the military have been nothing but supportive throughout the ordeal.
“I want to use this incident somehow as a form of good,” Ellis said.”I don’t know what that looks like yet, but I really want to turn this into something that does good for the world.”
“I don’t want to make it about me,” she added. “I don’t want to be the victim or the martyr. I want to show people that being strong and standing up to this hate, that hopefully something good can come from it.”
