The Tennessee Star on Friday sent a letter urging newly-confirmed FBI Director Kash Patel drop the agency’s opposition to the release of the full manifesto left by Audrey Elizabeth Hale, the biological woman who identified as a transgender man when she killed six at the Covenant School in Nashville on March 27, 2023.
Both Star News Digital Media Inc. (SNDM), which owns and operates The Star, and Michael Patrick Leahy, the editor-in-chief of The Star, are plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit that seeks to compel the FBI to release Hale’s full writings. Hale reportedly left about 1,000 pages in journals that police recovered from the residence where the 28-year-old lived with her parents.
Dan Lennington, the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty attorney who represents SNDM and Leahy in their federal case, on Friday asked the Department of Justice and FBI to provide an update on their timeline to respond to the settlement offer that SNDM extended earlier this month, which would see the lawsuit ended in exchange for the FBI dropping its objection to the release of Hale’s writings. As part of the offer, SNDM and Leahy would lower the amount of legal bills to be paid by defendants.
“As you may know, Director Patel has made very clear public statements that the Audrey Hale records should be released – the very records that are the subject of this lawsuit,” noted Lennington, referencing Patel’s previous remarks about Hale’s writings.
The FBI director stated in a December 2023 interview that “the manifesto from the Nashville school shooter” is “under direct control of the Director of the FBI,” whose agents he said “airmailed into that operation and said this is not getting out.”
U.S. District Court Judge Aleta A. Trauger has been reviewing the documents in camera since April 2024, and SNDM and Leahy, through their attorney, also suggested the DOJ ask the judge to place proceedings “on hold for a brief time while we negotiate a resolution.”
Though the amount of Hale’s writings that remain unreleased may exceed 90 percent, The Star legally obtained the killer’s 2023 journal in June 2024, and released the full document last September, revealing the killer’s intense focus on her identity as a transgender man, obsession with middle school classmates, and years of planning to attack the elementary school she once attended.
After The Star extended a recent settlement offer to the FBI, a source familiar with the Covenant investigation told The Star that a Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) captain ordered officers who searched the Hale family residence on the day of the attack not to complete evidence documents, and that certain evidence was spirited away by the FBI without maintaining a proper chain of custody.
The source also indicated two firearms were visible in Hale’s bedroom at the time of the search, and while MNPD stated the killer legally purchased seven weapons, the police department appears to have only accounted for five of the guns.
Previously, The Star obtained a memo sent by the FBI to MNPD in May 2023, within days of a state lawsuit being filed against the police department to demand the release of Hale’s writings, which “strongly” advised against the release of “legacy tokens” left by mass killers to explain their actions, and instead raised the precedent for their destruction.
The FBI declined to confirm the authenticity of the memo, but acknowledged it sends such materials to local police departments. MNPD similarly declined to acknowledged its authenticity, but confirmed the FBI department responsible for the memo assisted with its investigation.
In response to a subsequent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by The Star, the FBI claimed to have no documents mentioning “legacy tokens” in its possession.
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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].
They’ll destroy it before it sees the light of day. And then they need to be arrested and thrown in jail.