Boston Children’s Hospital (BCH) is among 20 medical centers and doctors subpoenaed by the Department of Justice (DOJ) over its involvement “in performing transgender medical procedures on children,” National Review revealed on Monday. The DOJ announced on July 9 that it had sent “more than 20 subpoenas” related to investigations that “include healthcare fraud, false statements, and more.” The DOJ never specified which transgender centers were under investigation, but the record of Boston Children’s Hospital would place it nearly at the top of almost any list.

Three years ago, BCH found itself mired in national controversy after the popular “Libs of TikTok” account revealed evidence suggesting that the hospital was carrying out genital gender transition surgeries on minors. Investigative reporters — decidedly not from the mainstream media — soon noticed abundant confirmation of that fact from the hospital’s own website and YouTube channel.

According to the hospital’s website, minor patients could receive a double mastectomy (so-called “top surgery”) at 15 years old and a vaginoplasty (which amputates male sexual organs and devises a functionless facsimile of female organs) at 17 years old. Patients who wanted a phalloplasty (like a vaginoplasty, but for females) could receive one at the age of 18. A BCH YouTube video confirmed this information, as a hospital social worker said genital surgeries at the hospital “are started at age 17 for very few … for where it’s really appropriate.”

However, some evidence suggested that even these age minimums were not always followed. In one video, Dr. Oren Ganor said their Center for Gender Surgery (CfGS) at Boston Children’s Hospital was “slightly flexible” about the age of gender transition surgeries. Indeed, “when you start digging around, you find that there are definitely cases of 13-year-olds, 14-year-olds, 15-year-olds who undergo these voluntary double mastectomies,” said The Post Millennial’s Cristina Buttons.

BCH vehemently denied the reports, insisting that the hospital “does not perform genital surgeries as part of gender-affirming care on a patient under the age of 18.” It also deleted its entire YouTube playlist describing the procedures and scrubbed its website to remove any language suggesting they carried out the procedures on minors.

The data showed otherwise. In a peer-reviewed study published in March 2022 in the Journal of Clinical Medicine, researchers wrote that the CfGS “was the first pediatric center in the United States to offer gender-affirming chest surgeries for individuals over 15-years-old and genital surgeries for those over 17 years of age.” The dataset for their study included 65 gender transition surgeries that the CfGS performed on patients under 18 between January 2017 and August 2020.

Performing genital gender transition surgeries on minors was not the only practice that landed BCH in hot water; they also came under fire for allegedly deceptive guidance regarding other gender transition procedures, which called into question the legitimacy of the consent they received. In an internal video obtained by Breitbart, Dr. Jeremi Carswell, director of BCH’s Gender Multispeciality Service, admitted that infertility caused by puberty blockers is “a big deal” and “something you must have a conversation about.” If a hypothetical “12- or 13-year-old testicle-bearing person who hasn’t really had too much puberty” is placed on puberty blockers and dosed with estrogen, she said, “you don’t have any sperm, and you’re not going to get them unless we reverse everything.”

This seemingly contradicted statements on the BCH website, which stated that puberty blockers merely “pause puberty.” Such statements may have triggered a DOJ investigation into “healthcare fraud, false statements, and more.”

During the period in question, BCH also received a $3.3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to build a training program and a pro-trans website targeting trans-identifying youth in other states. The grant ran from 2021 to 2023, under the Biden administration.

When asked about the federal probe, a BCH spokesperson neither confirmed nor denied it. “Boston Children’s Hospital is committed to providing safe, evidence-based, and compassionate care to every patient and family we serve,” the spokesperson told National Review. “In Massachusetts, access to gender affirming care is a protected right under state law, as outlined in M.G.L. Chapter 12, Section 11I 1/2. We uphold this responsibility with the utmost seriousness. Like other hospitals, we respond to government inquiries as appropriate.”

In a separate investigation, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking into whether BCH and two other hospitals violated federal laws against female genital mutilation (FGM) by carrying out genital gender transition surgery on minor females.

“Medical professionals and organizations that mutilated children in the service of a warped ideology will be held accountable by this Department of Justice,” declared Attorney General Pam Bondi.