NASHVILLE, Tennessee – At 9:30 am CT today, September 3, 2024, The Tennessee Star published all 90 pages of the journal written between January and March of 2023 by Audrey Elizabeth Hale, the 28-year-old biological woman who self identified as a transgender man and who, on March 27, 2023 murdered three 9-year-old students and three staff members at the Covenant School and was subsequently killed by Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) officers. Later that same day MNPD obtained this journal and a spiral notebook from the vehicle Hale used to drive to the school. MNPD Chief John Drake initially described this journal and the spiral notebook as the “manifesto” of Hale.
After securing a search warrant for the residence Hale shared with her parents, MNPD, accompanied by agents from the FBI and the ATF, obtained on the afternoon of March 27, 2023 approximately 20 additional journals written by Hale over an estimated 15 years from 2007 to 2022 which are said to contain about 1,000 pages.
We legally obtained this handwritten journal – which we refer to as The Covenant Killer’s 2023 Journal to distinguish it from the many journals written by Hale prior to 2023 – in early June of 2024 from a source familiar with the MNPD investigation. We believe it to be authentic. In addition to our belief, the journal was confirmed as authentic in court by a Metro Nashville Government lawyer in attendance at a June 2024 court hearing, and in a court filing submitted on June 14, 2024 by MNPD Lieutenant Alfredo Alevado.
We have had a First Amendment right to publish these unredacted documents from the moment we legally obtained them.
On April 24, 2023, in compliance with the Tennessee Public Records Act, we formally requested of MNPD, a department within the Metro Nashville Davidson County Government, that they release all of the writings of Audrey Elizabeth Hale they had obtained as part of their investigation into the March 27, 2023 murders. Metro Nashville Government denied that request one day later on April 25, 2023, and in May 2023 we filed suit against Metro Nashville Government in Davidson County, Tennessee Chancery Court to obtain those writings, as provided for by the Tennessee Public Records Act. The case was assigned to Judge I’Ashea Myles. In this matter we are well represented by America First Legal and their outstanding local counsel, Nick Barry.
In May 2023, MNPD provided Judge Myles with all of Hale’s writings obtained through their investigation for her in-camera review. On July 4, 2024, Judge Myles released her decision in the case, which was to deny our request, on two grounds: (1) MNPD’s assertion that they were conducting an ongoing investigation into the murders was a statutory exception to the Tennessee Public Records Act which would have allowed our request and (2) The assertion of ownership of Hales’ writings and a subsequent copyright claim stemming from that purported ownership by an intervening group created a non-statutory exception to the Tennessee Public Records Act.
On July 31, 2024 we appealed the trial court’s ruling to the Tennessee Court of Appeals. We expect to win our appeal.
Though we have had the First Amendment right to publish these writings since early June when we first received them, we have delayed their publication for three months until now for the following reasons.
1. In the first instance, we chose to publish articles beginning on June 5, 2024 that were based on these writings but that did not feature the publication of these writings because we anticipated the Tennessee trial court was close to rendering a decision and we wanted to allow the court sufficient time to rule on our arguments. All told, we have published close to 50 articles at The Tennessee Star that are based on The Covenant Killer’s 2023 Journal but do not contain the actual pages from that journal. You can find those articles here.
2. On June 10, 2024, five days after we began publishing articles based on The Covenant Killer’s 2023 Journal, Judge Myles issued a Show Cause Hearing Order to me, requiring me to show up in her courtroom on June 17, 2024 and explain to her why I should not be held in contempt of court for violating a court order. This was a surprising development, given that I have never violated any court order in this case and that the judge never produced the court order upon which the Show Cause Hearing Order was based.
When I appeared in court on June 17, 2024, Judge Myles changed the purpose of the hearing – claiming it was for her to determine “the landscape” of the case – and again refused to identify to my counsel the court order she thought I might be violating. Judge Myles ended that hearing by stating that she would take under consideration both a) her final ruling and b) whether or not she would appoint a “special prosecutor” to investigate and prosecute me for contempt of court – even though there is absolutely no evidence before the court that I have done anything that could be considered contempt of court. This statement, combined with the June 10 Show Cause Hearing Order and the June 17 Show Cause Hearing, have combined to create a chilling effect on my First Amendment rights.
While Judge Myles issued her final ruling on the case itself on July 4, 2024, she has provided no information as to whether she intends to appoint a “special prosecutor” to investigate me. This “Sword of Damocles” has been held over my head by Judge Myles since June 17, 2024, and we have held off on publishing The Covenant Killer’s 2023 Journal, in part, until our legal defense financial resources have reached a sufficient level such that I can hire counsel to represent me in the event Judge Myles seeks to resurrect this false claim against me. Our legal defense financial resources have just recently reached that level of sufficiency. I am pleased to announce that we are once again ably represented by Daniel Horwitz on the limited issue in which he represented us at the June 17 Show Cause Hearing.
3. Until just recently, the lack of legal representation to address a second potential legal issue also prohibited our publication of The Covenant Killer’s 2023 Journal. Though they have not registered their copyright claim with the federal government, the intervening group that purports to own Hale’s writings also purports to hold the copyright to those writings. We consider the ownership claim to be dubious at best and the copyright claim to be without merit. We also believe that the fair use doctrine would prohibit the successful litigation of any copyright infringement claim that might be brought against us for publishing this journal. Nonetheless, we chose not to publish the journal until we had secured proper legal representation in the event a frivolous copyright infringement claim were to be brought against us in federal court. I am pleased to announce today that, in the event a copyright infringement claim is brought against us, we are now represented by the Dhillon Group, the premiere law firm in the country representing conservative groups and organizations.
The Covenant Killer’s 2023 Journal is now downloadable to everyone at our website, The Tennessee Star. We encourage every interested party, and especially every media organization, to download this handwritten document, read it, and write as many stories as you want about it.
One final note: We have added a “Tennessee Star” watermark on every page of The Covenant Killer’s 2023 Journal so that readers can be assured of the trustworthy authenticity of the documents we legally obtained in June 2024.
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Michael Patrick Leahy is the CEO of Star News Digital Media Inc. and Editor-in-Chief of The Tennessee Star, which is owned and operated by Star News Digital Media Inc.
