The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) this week acknowledged a “division-wide system outage” impacted the DOJ’s Civil Division last weekend through a Monday court filing.
Both Star News Digital Media, Inc. (SNDM), which owns and operates The Tennessee Star, and Editor-in-Chief Michael Patrick Leahy are currently waiting for a response from the DOJ after inviting the FBI to drop its opposition to the release of the complete written works left by Covenant School killer Audrey Elizabeth Hale before the transition of government to President-elect Donald Trump.
The DOJ acknowledged the technology failure through a filing in the case brought by former counterintelligence official Peter Strzok against the FBI after he was fired by the agency in a media frenzy that culminated in the release of his private messages with Lisa Page, another former fellow FBI official, which showed the pair were romantically involved and discussed their mutual opposition to Trump.
In their filing, the DOJ requested “two additional business days” to provide their response to a filing by Strzok’s attorneys, declaring, “Good cause exists for this extension because of a Division-wide system outage that prevented counsel for Defendant’s access to necessary network files over the weekend of November 16-17, 2024.”
While Reporter Josh Gerstein at German-owned Politico wrote in a post to the social media platform X that the technology failure was related to “planned electrical maintenance” completed over the weekend.
Both Leahy and SNDM sued the FBI in May 2023 after they opposed the release of the written journals left by Hale, the biological female who identified as a transgender man when she killed three 9-year-old children and three staff members at the Covenant School on March 27, 2023.
That lawsuit remains ongoing after the FBI delivered Hale’s writings to U.S. District Court Judge Aleta A. Trauger for in-camera review in April, but attorneys representing Leahy and SNDM invited the federal government to drop its opposition to the release in light of the incoming Trump administration earlier this week, requesting a response by Friday.
While neither the DOJ nor FBI have replied to the offer by Leahy and SNDM, the agency’s preparation to transition to the Trump administration appears to be underway, as the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project reported a paper shredding service was spotted outside the Washington, D.C. offices of the DOJ on Tuesday.
Despite both the FBI and Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) withholding dozens of notebooks left by Hale, The Star obtained the killer’s 2023 journal in June, and wrote about 50 articles revealing its content before obtaining legal backing in September and publishing the journal in its entirety.
Entries within Hale’s journal confirm her obsession with transgenderism and her gender identity, reveal she plotted her attack on the Covenant School for years prior to March 2023, and expose her apparently lifelong obsession with two former middle school classmates.
In the simultaneous Tennessee lawsuit seeking to compel MNPD to release Hale’s writings, Leahy and SNDM are appealing the July 4 decision by Tennessee Chancery Court Judge I’Ashea L. Myles to block the release of even one page of Hale’s writings, citing the claims of the Covenant Children’s Trust, which asserts copyright ownership over to the killer’s journals. Leahy has expressed confidence he will win that appeal.
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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].
Photo “FBI at Dusk” by Randall Myers CCNCSA2.0.
