Grusch’s Privacy Lawsuit has been Dismissed: What Does this Say About Protections for Future UAP Whistleblowers?

A privacy rights lawsuit filed by UAP whistleblower David Grusch against the Loudon County Sheriff’s Department was dismissed on August 7, on the grounds that Virginia state law does not apply to the police records that led to the revelation of a series of mental health emergencies suffered by Grusch in 2014 and 2018. While Grusch has the option to appeal the decision, this ruling may have profound implications for future UAP whistleblowers looking to come forward, as the supposedly-confidential mental health records in question were obtained by a journalist who received a tip from individuals described as “DoD and intelligence” representatives, in what appeared to be a coordinated smear campaign aimed at discrediting Grusch.

The lawsuit, filed on July 16, 2024, was filed in response to the department’s release of confidential medical records pertaining to a mental health episode Grusch experienced in 2018, with his legal team arguing that the release of these records was not only a breach of his personal privacy, but also may have constituted a violation of Virginia Code Section 37.2–818, which requires police records that involve involuntary detention events to remain confidential. This confidentiality also extends to freedom of information requests, of which was how Ken Klippenstein, the reporter that published the records in The Intercept on August 9, 2023, obtained the files.

Described as “a smear campaign” by former CIA Staff Operations Officer Tracy Walder, the records, consisting of a series of police reports, outline two incidents, one in 2014 and another in 2018 that involved police being dispatched to the Leesburg, Virginia address where Grusch was residing at the time.

The 2018 incident led to Grusch receiving treatment for severe depression brought about by a combination of combat-related PTSD and the then-recent death of a close friend.

Grusch had disclosed this episode of his life to investigative journalist Ross Coulthart in the weeks before his claims of the existence of a long-running campaign to illegally hide UAP-related programs from Congressional oversight were made public on June 5, 2023 by The Debrief and NewsNation.

On August 6 the $2.5 million lawsuit, David C. Grusch v. Michael Chapman, et al., was dismissed with prejudice—meaning that it cannot be refiled—although Grusch has the option to appeal the decision within 30 days, although no appeal has been filed as of yet.

“According to the court proceedings, the defendants “likely argued that these were simply police records rather than protected medical information, claimed legal immunity, or invoked statute of limitations defenses,” according to an analysis posted by UFO podcaster Cristina Gomez on her UFO/UAP News website.

“After postponing decisions following a June 2nd hearing, the court ultimately ruled that Virginia’s mental health confidentiality statute applies only to court files, not police records, and determined that the redacted release complied with FOIA requirements,” Gomez reported. This ruling comes despite Grusch’s team stating that Virginia state law contains “crystal clear language protecting records, relevant medical records, reports, and court documents pertaining to hearings related to temporary detention.”

Investigative journalist Ross Coulthart has likened this case to the retaliation leveled against Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, where, at the behest of then-President Richard Nixon, confidential medical documents were stolen from Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office in 1971 by CIA and FBI agents, to be used to discredit the former RAND Corporation analyst. The affair, associated with the infamous Watergate scandal, backfired, with the illegal provenance of the evidence causing espionage charges that had been brought against Ellsberg to be dropped.

More than half a century after Ellsberg’s ordeal, the dismissal of Grusch’s case stands to have a chilling effect on prospective whistleblowers that are looking to come forward with their own UAP experiences: if dropping a simple hint to a sympathetic journalist about where to look for compromising information is all it takes to successfully execute a character assassination operation, as it was in Grusch’s case, what incentive does a prospective whistleblower have to come forward—especially when this supposedly confidential information isn’t protected by the courts?

“The case ultimately raises fundamental questions about the balance between government transparency and individual privacy rights, and whether current whistleblower protections are adequate to shield those who expose sensitive national security information from having their most private struggles used against them in the court of public opinion,” Gomez said.