A normal person feels terrible when they learn about what National Guard pilot trainee Jo Ellis endured online from Wednesday night to Friday morning (false speculation that she was the pilot of the Black Hawk helicopter that crashed Wednesday evening).
Given her appearance earlier in the week on the Smerconish podcast and website talking about her identity as a Black Hawk pilot trainee based in Virgina with 500 hours of flying experience, and given the military’s refusal to identify the female pilot of the downed Black Hawk while stating she had 500 flying hours, there developed a swarm of people inquiring about Jo Ellis.
If she had never gone public on Smerconish.com this week about her transgender journey and her opposition to Donald Trump’s executive order, she never would have been subject to a flood of rumors. There’s always a price to pay for going public.
A normal person has many questions about the crash. The Black Hawk had been on an erratic and disturbing flight path. Alex Berenson’s Substack published an email that noted: “The helo exhibited an erratic flight path, executing two near 90 degree turns, turning west off course, crossing Haines Point and heading directly to the north end of DCA airport before turning back south along the river. Given the airspace, this is indicative of inexperience, unfamiliarity and possibly even incompetence.”
New York Magazine published Jan. 31, 2025:
The D.C. Plane Crash Is No Mystery
A lot is unknown, but one basic fact is not: The helicopter pilot was clearly at fault. …there really is no great mystery as to which aircraft was at fault. It was quite clearly the Army Black Hawk helicopter that was not where it was supposed to be. While it may be the case that the tower was not properly staffed or that the airport’s resources are chronically overtaxed, neither of these things played a role in the crash that took the lives of 67 passengers and crew.
The controller handling the aircraft in the Reagan tower likewise didn’t do anything wrong. He was keeping track of the Black Hawk as it flew south along the Potomac through a narrow corridor called Route 4 that passed well under the approach path for Runway 33. Seeing that the plane and the helicopter were flying toward each other in opposite directions, the controller called the helicopter on the radio and asked if it had the plane in sight. The pilot replied in the affirmative and asked for “visual separation,” meaning that they would take responsibility for staying clear of the other aircraft. The tower granted it: “Visual separation approved.”
That means that at the moment of collision, the Black Hawk pilot had accepted responsibility for what was about to happen. Unless some dramatic and frankly hard-to-imagine new information becomes available, there is little ambiguity as to who bears responsibility for the collision.
The Army has confirmed that all three soldiers were from Bravo Company, 12th Combat Aviation Battalion, based at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, about 20 miles south of Washington, D.C. The unit primarily transports senior U.S. military officials around the Washington area and beyond…
The evaluated pilot was in command of the flight…
Koziol confirmed to reporters on a conference call that the male instructor pilot had more than 1,000 hours of flight time, the female pilot who was commanding the flight at the time had more than 500 hours of flight time, and the crew chief was also said to have hundreds of hours of flight time.
A Black Hawk pilot in training who had nothing to do with this week’s crash, Jo Ellis, has received a nasty lesson the past 40 hours on the dark side of public political activism.
Is there anything negative that might happen to you when you decide to speak out publicly on a hot button issue while sharing intimate details of your life? You bet. Don’t go public if you can’t handle the blowback.
Male to female transgender pilot trainee Jo Ellis published an essay on her transgender journey within the military on Smerconish.com the day before the crash and then was interviewed by Michael Smerconish, a CNN personality, on his Sirius XM show on Wednesday. She gave out details that briefly made her a plausible fit for the identity of the unknown female pilot of the Black Hawk that crashed Wednesday.
With the U.S. Military refusing to disclose the name of the female pilot who appeared to deliberately murder about 67 people over DC, it is inevitable that people will be in a frenzy to find out her identity.
Thursday evening, I researched how many other Black Hawk pilot trainees had given interviews about the most intimate details of their lives. I couldn’t find prior examples.
Jo Ellis chose to do something extraordinary for her position as an elite member of the U.S. Military. Jo Ellis chose to go public with the most intimate details of her life to make a political point against President Trump’s executive order banning the transgendered from U.S. military service. In the process, she offered up details about her 500 hours of training on the Black Hawk and how she was based in Virginia and she made herself a plausible fit for speculation about the helicopter pilot.
President Trump in his press conference Thursday said the crash was the result of DEI.
Given this context, it is not surprising that thousands of people asked about the whereabout of Jo Ellis, beginning a couple of hours after the crash. Jo Ellis chose to wait about 36 hours before responding to speculation. She “previously worked as the Digital Media Manager for Smerconish.com.” She’s not somebody innocent about how the internet works.
For about 36 hours, Michael Smerconish refused to answer inquiries about Jo Ellis. Then he tweeted out his segment: “Michael debunks vicious rumors falsely attributing Jo Ellis to the DC plane crash.”
I understand why Smerconish wanted to keep his powder dry and to allow speculation to build and then use the hubbub to his own advantage.
The vicious rumors would not have built if Michael Smerconish and Jo Ellis had not refused to answer inquiries from thousands of people for about 36 hours.
Just as Barack Obama allowed speculation about his birth certificate to run riot for years before publicly producing his birth certificate, Michael Smerconish and Jo Ellis created a situation where she would be the subject of frenzy and then they waited about 36 hours to dispel the frenzy.
In similar situations going forward after what appears to be a mass terror event with scores of casualties and the people in charge refusing to name the person who appears to be the perpetrator, there will be similar levels of fevered speculation.
Gossip naturally fills in the gaps of what we most want to know but don’t know.
I think we have a moral responsibility to diminish other people’s anxiety and discomfort if we can do so easily and without any significant cost to ourselves. If I knew that thousands of people were speculating that I committed an act of mass terror, I would try to respond publicly with the evidence I had to dispel the frenzy. If I notice that somebody is ill at ease, and I have reason to think that I can say something to put the person at ease, I want to do so.
Those who stay silent for no good reason in the face of fevered speculation so that they can feel righteously victimized by other people’s natural and normal inquiries, that is their choice to diminish social trust and cohesion for their own private advantage.
Never share anything publicly that you would not want people to gossip about. If you do, you are responsible for creating the conditions for gossip to spread.
People who do not care to fire proof their home are not morally culpable for starting fires if they did not do so, but they are responsible for fire propagation.
Fire requires certain ingredients. You remove those ingredients, and you reduce the odds of a raging fire.
Gossip requires certain ingredients. You remove those ingredients, and you reduce the chances you will be the object of raging gossip.
The governors of Georgia and Mississippi have identified two of the Black Hawk helicopter crew killed in a collision with a passenger airliner at Reagan National Airport on Wednesday night. They are Brooksville, Miss. native Chief Warrant Officer Andrew Eaves, whose wife has also posted about his death on Facebook and asked for “peace,” and Georgia native Staff Sgt. Ryan O’Hara.
A U.S. military official told NPR on Friday that at the request of the family the Army is not going to release the name of the female member of the three-person helicopter crew. The official was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.
The withholding of the name is a highly unusual move. The identity of the third crew member has already drawn intense scrutiny online.
The New York Times reports:
Jo Ellis, a helicopter pilot in the Virginia Army National Guard, was falsely identified as the captain of the crashed Black Hawk helicopter in thousands of social media posts this week. The flurry of falsehoods were so extreme that Ms. Ellis, who is transgender, posted a “proof of life” video to Facebook clarifying that she is alive and had not flown the crashed chopper.
The falsehoods, which tried to tie Ms. Ellis’s transgender identity to the tragedy, spread online shortly after President Trump and his allies attempted to tie the crash in Washington, D.C., to so-called “D.E.I. programs,” an array of initiatives meant to boost diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace. There is no evidence that such programs played any role in the crash.
“I understand some people have associated me with the crash in D.C. and that is false,” Ms. Ellis said in a video posted to her Facebook account. “It is insulting to the families to try to tie this to some sort of political agenda. They don’t deserve that. I don’t deserve this.”
Ms. Ellis is a Black Hawk pilot who has served for 15 years in the Virginia Army National Guard, according to a blog post she published Tuesday on Smerconish, an independent news website, which detailed her transition while in the armed forces. Ms. Ellis did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Posts and reposts about Ms. Ellis surged Friday morning as thousands of accounts on X shared her photos and details online. The posts earned hundreds of thousands of views on the platform, according to a review by The New York Times and data from Tweet Binder, a company that collects data on the social network. “Jo Ellis” was the No. 2 most-trending topic in the United States on X late Friday morning with more than 90,000 posts, according to Trends24, a website that tracks trending topics.
On Jan. 28, 2025, Jo Ellis published on Smerconish.com:
Living to Serve, Living as Myself: A Transgender Service Member’s Perspective
I’ve had symptoms of what I now know to be “Gender Dysphoria” since I was 5 years old. I learned early to hide these symptoms from my family because I thought they meant I was a bad person. This led to healthy and not-so-healthy coping mechanisms. I thought that if I could just be more religious, more successful, more manly… that I would cure my condition.
I got married, bought a house, helped raise a stepdaughter, played drums in the church band, and adopted a dog. All the things I believed a good man should do. And I really wanted to do those things, but I also secretly hoped it would fix me. It didn’t work.
In 2020, as a Staff Sergeant, I applied and was accepted into the Army’s Warrant Officer Flight Training program. I completed Warrant Officer Candidate School, SERE School (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape), and the UH60 Black Hawk helicopter course. During the Pandemic and flight training, I realized that I had repressed my gender dysphoria symptoms and was finally at a point in my life and career where I could face them. I sought therapy and learned what options were available. I returned home from flight school and flew with my unit for a year before taking next steps. After much counseling and discussion with my spouse, we agreed that for my health I needed to take steps towards transition.
In 2023 I sent an email to my command giving them notice that I intended to start transition under the current in-service transition policy. My commander called me immediately after receiving the email and offered his support. I was met with overwhelming support from my entire command team and it would be kept confidential until I was ready to officially change genders. During this time, I started hormone treatment and started slowly presenting female in private or on vacations. I was medically stable and deployable 2 months later. Not every transgender person needs or wants gender reassignment surgery.
In 2024 I came out to my unit and started presenting publicly as a woman. Once again, I was met with overwhelming support from my unit at large. For obvious reasons, I was nervous I’d be unwelcome or make other females feel uncomfortable with my presence in the barracks, restrooms, etc. Many female soldiers in my unit offered their support. Some even went out of their way to make me feel comfortable in their space.
I’ve paid out of pocket for all my trans-related care. The military hasn’t covered any of it. I recently underwent facial feminization surgery and was non-deployable for 6 weeks. This was considered an elective surgery and not deemed medically necessary for transition. Similar to anyone who gets a nose job or face lift.
Since I’m part time military, I’ve also had to balance military obligations while working full time in the private sector. When I’m called up for service or training, I make less money than I do in the private sector. I say this to stress that this is coming from a servant heart and not motivated by finances or promises of medical care.
I’ve served in the same unit for 15 years. I want to serve at least 15 more. I love my state and I love my country.