WASHINGTON (7News) — In the immediate aftermath of the deadly Jan. 29 mid-air collision over the Potomac River, a viral rumor allegedly started by X user Matt Wallace on social media included a photo of the alleged Black Hawk pilot. It was someone who he claimed was a transgender woman who wrote a letter about depression before the collision.

However, that person, Jo Ellis, was very much alive and nowhere near D.C. at the time of the collision, according to a new civil lawsuit announced this week against Wallace.

Lawyers for Ellis, in a lawsuit filed on April 9 in the U.S. District Court in Colorado, are going after Wallace, a verified X user with several alleged accounts on the platform, for using Ellis' image to claim the tragedy was "another trans terror attack."

Click here to view the PDF file.

In addition, Ellis's lawyers said Wallace falsely claimed that she wrote an article "calling out" President Donald Trump's trans military ban while also claiming Ellis was in the process of converting to Judaism.

"When Plaintiff (Ellis) awoke on January 31, 2025, she discovered she was the second most-trending topic in the United States on X with more than 90,000 posts mentioning her name or her likeness," a portion of the lawsuit read. "Plaintiff was forced into the public sphere and can no longer remain a private citizen due to Defendant’s lies. Given her immediate notoriety and the fact that she is a transgender woman, she fears for the immediate safety of herself and her...

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