A 34-year-old man was convicted Wednesday of illegally accessing the private medical data of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2019 but acquitted of posting the information to an online message board where conspiracists falsely claimed Democratic politicians were covering up her death.

Trent J. Russell testified in his own defense near the end of a two-day trial in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., repeatedly asserting that he never viewed or posted the justice’s confidential medical information, which showed details of her cancer treatments at George Washington University Hospital.

“I never looked at medical records for patients I wasn’t assigned to,” said Russell, who in court testimony portrayed himself as a longtime first responder and former Army combat medic who did a tour of duty in Afghanistan. He denied being a conspiracy theorist.

After a half-day of deliberations, jurors convicted Russell of wrongfully obtaining Ginsburg’s private health information and destroying records in a federal investigation. He was found not guilty of wrongfully disclosing the information.

The justice’s hospital chart first surfaced on 4chan, then spread to Twitter and YouTube, attracting immediate attention from federal investigators and prompting alarm from U.S. Supreme Court police officials, one of whom testified in the case about discreetly shepherding the justice to cancer treatments, in part to protect her privacy. She died in 2020 at age 87.

The original post had been deleted by the time federal agents were investigating the data breach, witnesses testified, and when the FBI contacted 4chan to determine who posted Ginsburg’s medical chart, the website said it could no longer provide such information as the time of posting or the poster’s IP address because of the deletion.

Russell had access to the hospital’s patient records because he worked as an organ transplant coordinator who would evaluate patients near death across 48 hospitals in the Washington region, he testified. He conceded on the witness stand to frequenting 4chan and enjoying discussions there about TV, movies, video games, current events - and conspiracy theories - for two decades.

FBI agents and a former hospital administrator testified that they traced the Jan. 7, 2019, search for Ginsburg’s patient chart to one of Russell’s home computers. Russell initially told federal agents in February 2019 that it was possible his cats had run across his keyboard, although he later said he was joking. He told the jury he had “no idea” how Ginsburg’s records turned up on his screen. “I feel like everyone’s made typos,” he said.

The federal agents testified that his cellphone location data placed him in the area of his Arlington residence at the time his hospital credentials were being used to access Ginsburg’s medical chart from his home computer. Federal prosecutors in Virginia argued that Russell violated Ginsburg’s right to privacy under the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), even though he had received regular training and reminders not to access or disclose private medical data.

Ginsburg had not been referred as a potential organ donor to Russell’s employer, the Washington Regional Transplant Community, and Russell therefore had no reason to be searching for her patient chart, witnesses testified.

U.S. officials said Russell falsely told investigators during the February 2019 interview that his phone had been stolen. They said he deleted data on a hard drive before turning it over to the FBI for inspection. Russell’s attorney, Charles Burnham, said that was a mischaracterization by the federal agents. Russell had only formatted the drive, which is not quite the same as deleting its data, he argued. (Formatting a hard drive entails deleting data to improve its performance.)

“You didn’t think it would be relevant that data on your hard drive was no longer on your hard drive?” Assistant U.S. Attorney Zoe Bedell asked Russell during cross-examination.

The FBI nonetheless was able to recover a trove of telling evidence, witnesses testified. The screenshot posted to 4chan, showing Ginsburg’s cancer treatments between around 2014 and 2018, came with a message: “She died dec 31st.”

An FBI agent who scanned Russell’s hard drive said she found indications that he had visited multiple posts on 4chan discussing a conspiracy theory laced with antisemitic tropes that Democratic politicians were covering up Ginsburg’s death.

The agent said she found an image mimicking a poster for the 1989 film “Weekend at Bernie’s,” labeled “Weekend at Ginsburg’s.” It showed then-Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) propping up Ginsburg from both sides, in a morbid play on how the movie characters cover up Bernie’s death so that they can use his beach house.

Prosecutors said they also found 4chan posts on his hard drive delving into other antisemitic conspiracy theories, including one titled “Mossad just tried to assassinate Trump during the White House Christmas tree Lighting” and a Google search for “dirty jew.”

Russell testified that he had last voted in the 2012 presidential election for President Barack Obama and that he was not prejudiced against Jewish people such as Ginsburg or any race or ethnicity.

“Obviously I’m not antisemitic,” he said. “I have Jewish friends.”

Of Ginsburg, he said, “I respect her service.”

U.S. District Judge Michael S. Nachmanoff scheduled sentencing for Nov. 7. Russell, who now resides in Nebraska, faces a maximum sentence of 21 years in prison and tens of thousands of dollars in fines, though he is likely to get far less as a first-time offender.