00:00Thank you, gentlelady, for your questions. I'll now recognize the chairman of the committee,
00:02Mr. Jordan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Heimel, on June 23, 2023, you get a letter from the United
00:10States Department of Justice, Southern District of Texas. Probably a day you, you know, a letter
00:15that probably ruined your whole day, right? Well, so the agents came. This was a few hours before
00:24I was graduating from surgical residency. The ceremony was later that evening. I was meeting
00:29with my parents, you know, my sister. I was going with my wife. And so when the agents came, you know,
00:35I refused to speak with them. My wife had advised me to, you know, not speak with them without an
00:40attorney present. But, you know, we knew that it was so corrupt what they were doing, that there
00:45was a certain sense of defiance. So, you know, we kind of celebrated this new part of our life. It
00:52was kind of a hard thing to describe, but something kind of came over us. First two sentences,
00:57this office is involved in investigations dealing with federal law violations. You are a potential
01:00target in this criminal investigation. So, you didn't want to talk to these guys. You listened
01:03to your wife, which was good counsel and good advice and good that you did that. But you did go
01:07get an attorney and you got the guy sitting beside you. Is that right? Yes, sir. And Mr. Lytle, when you
01:11understood what was going on here, you contacted, just like you would as an attorney, you contacted
01:16the Southern District of Texas. You contacted the lady who signed this, Ms. Ansari, the U.S.,
01:21assistant U.S. attorney. Is that right? Yes, I did. Tell me about that conversation. Well, I reached
01:27out to her as a defense attorney would always do when there's a target letter out there, because
01:31that could mean that they're going to charge the person right away. That's under department policies
01:35that that means they believe he's a putative defendant. Yeah, normally that means they think
01:39they got a slam-dunk case on this guy, right? That's right. Yeah, and they're going to negotiate
01:42some guilty plea. And you reach out to her, what'd she say? Did she know anything about the case? She didn't
01:46know anything about the case. She had to talk to the agents and she'd get back to me when she knew
01:49more. She signed the target letter and she didn't know what the target was about. That's my
01:54understanding. That was great. So then you had subsequent conversations. And I understand in one
01:57of these conversations that happened after you learned she didn't know what the heck was going
02:01on, even though she signed the letter that ruined his day, the day he's graduating from medical school,
02:05you have subsequent conversations. And she says, well, maybe he isn't a target. Maybe if he'd come
02:10apologize and say pretty, pretty, please, we'd downgrade it to a misdemeanor. Is that right?
02:16That's true. She sort of was a weak and a nod, like maybe we can pretend he's not a
02:19target. And I said, that train's kind of left the station. And there's been emails with her
02:23calling him a target to me. And I said, I just can't do that. But why, why can't we talk about
02:29the case? And she had still didn't know the facts of the case. She wanted to dead set to be
02:33interviewing Dr. Heim, which I didn't want to do that as a lawyer because I didn't want to reveal
02:38any, I didn't want, I didn't know what she was getting at. And so they, they wind up charging
02:42with the maximum, like 10 years, I think you said the maximum they could charge. And they were so
02:46determined to get Dr. Heim. She was so determined to get Dr. Heim, even though he didn't violate
02:51HIPAA, didn't do anything wrong, that she not only threatened him, come talk to me, apologize,
02:57say pretty, pretty, please. We'll make it a misdemeanor. She also went after your wife.
03:01She also went after Dr. Heim's wife. Is that right, Mr. Lytle?
03:04That's right. She, she alluded that she would not make any comments or her agents make any comments
03:09about the background investigators for Dr. Heim's wife, as she's a new AUSA being hired,
03:15unless she became difficult. And I didn't really know what that meant, but I took it to being a
03:20retaliatory phrase that if she's going to be involved in this, then there's going to be
03:24something that's going to come for her too. Well, what's, what's she supposed to do? She's a
03:27lawyer. She's married to the, to the, to married to Dr. Heim. She's not supposed to give him advice
03:32or counsel or talk to him? This whole thing, you know, any kind of HIPAA as a criminal case is so rare in
03:38this country. It's rarely ever prosecuted, but then in this context of this political debate going on
03:44to come forward and charge Dr. Heim, it seemed just really out of control. It really was surprising
03:49to me to see this kind of a charge. It was sort of asked, sort of, I think begs the, the, the question,
03:54why did, why did they do it? Why did they do it? Why was she, why was, why, I mean, this seems so
03:59ridiculous. Why this behavior, why do you think they, they did it, Dr. Lytle, or maybe Dr. Heim, or maybe even
04:05Miss Sivage? I can say that we found a lot of bias, a lot of conflicts of interest, a lot of
04:11connections to the hospital and a closeness to these families. But at the end of the day, if there
04:17was any kind of issue, it shouldn't be handled in the criminal courts. It should be handled in the
04:21public arena, in the public debate. Yeah. Dr. You know, I think that they went after me so hard
04:27in order to send a message to everyone else. Of course they did. Because I saw it in my residency,
04:32right? You know, the, the other people who thought this was awful, we actually had to meet in dark
04:36corners. We, we knew that we couldn't say anything publicly. And that's the point. It's, it's to,
04:42it's to chill anyone else from stepping forward. It's why they went and set, raid Mark Houck's house
04:47with all these agents. Why they'd send multiple agents to, to the, the, the ATF goes into Brian
04:54Malinowski's house and he ends up getting shot. They thought he had like six gun violations. It's why
04:59they do it. It's to chill anyone else from coming forward. We will make life miserable for you,
05:04miserable for Ms. Savage. We will do that because we don't want anyone else threatening the left's
05:09position. And that is the frightening thing. And I'll say one more. And I'll just say this and I'll
05:13let you finish. God bless you for doing it. God bless you for doing it. And Mr. Lytle for defending
05:17you. Thanks for stepping forward, having the courage to do so. And I'll say one more thing,
05:21right? They came after me in order to make my life miserable, in order to send a message,
05:25but they came after me, right? To make my life miserable. We're going to make their life
05:30miserable. All right. That's what we're going to do. I thank the gentleman for his question. I'll
05:34now recognize the gentlelady from Washington, Ms. Jayapal. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The right
05:39to privacy is enshrined in our constitution and in the...
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