The U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) did not respond to multiple press inquiries from The Tennessee Star after the committee reportedly received the 1,299 pages of journals written by transgender Covenant School killer Audrey Elizabeth Hale from the FBI under Director Kash Patel.
Shortly after the Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) concluded its investigation into the attack at the Covenant School, where Hale killed six on March 27, 2023, independent journalist Megyn Kelly reported on April 7 that the FBI allowed her to analyze and report the contents of Hale’s writings, while restricting her from publishing the pages.
The Star published Hale’s full 2023 journal last September, releasing about 90 pages of her writings from the months before her attack on her former Christian school.
Kelly also stated that the FBI, in an effort to engage in transparency, provided the documents to HPSCI so that Congress might review their contents.
The Star contacted HPSCI and its chairman, Representative Rick Crawford (R-AR-01), but did not receive a response from the chairman or his committee to its April 8 inquiry. Inquiries to the committee’s vice chairman, Representative Trent Kelly (R-MS-01), and to committee member Representative J. French Hill (R-AR-02), made by The Star last Wednesday, likewise went unanswered.
An earlier press inquiry to Kelly’s company, Devil May Care Media, which handles her media requests, went unanswered.
The FBI previously did not respond to a press inquiry, instead directing The Star to the Department of Justice, where attorneys represent the federal agency in the lawsuit filed by Editor-in-Chief Michael Patrick Leahy and the outlet’s parent company, Star News Digital Media, Inc. (SNDM). The Star filed the suit after the FBI refused to release Hale’s writings in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
Filed in May 2023, the lawsuit seeks to force the FBI to release the killer’s writings, which it has long opposed. District Court Judge Aleta Trauger has been conducting an in-camera review of the killer’s writings for about one year to determine which writings The Star might receive for public release.
As FBI Director Kash Patel indicated during a December 2023 interview that it was his predecessor, former Director Christopher Wray, who blocked the release of Hale’s writings, SNDMÂ and Leahy extended a settlement offer around the time of Patel’s nomination to lead the agency, which would have seen the lawsuit dropped in exchange for Patel dropping his agency’s opposition to the release.
Despite the release to HPSCI and Kelly, the FBI has not replied to the settlement offer, and attorney Dan Lennington at the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty informed the DOJ last week that the settlement offer may be off the table following the conditional release to Kelly and reported release to HPSCI.
On Monday, the DOJ told attorneys representing The Star that the FBI is investigating the release of materials to Kelly. The government lawyer also requested specific details on the settlement offer.
Former Kansas Attorney General Phil Kline, who now teaches at Liberty University School of Law, recently said Kelly’s conditional release could result in the FBI losing in court against SNDM and Leahy.
“That’s not going to win. It shouldn’t, and no court should abide by that with an administration that has now flipped its position onto the law and is trying to carve out a position that allows it to curry favor with certain media representatives,” Kline told Leahy during a recent appearance on The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
The legal expert explained, “That’s not how the law reads. It’s not released to who you can get a good report from, or released to certain people.”
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Tom Pappert is the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, and also reports for The Pennsylvania Daily Star and The Arizona Sun Times. Follow Tom on X/Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
