Why the FBI BATTLED Tennessee media over Covenant School shooter’s manifesto

The Covenant School shooter’s manifesto has finally been released by the Tennessee Star — but it didn’t happen without a fight.

“We’re just a journalistic organization seeking documents which the public has a right to see, and at every level, the local government has obstructed those desires, as has the FBI,” Tennessee Star CEO Michael Patrick Leahy tells Jill Savage and Matthew Peterson of “Blaze News Tonight.”

“In fact, the Metro National Police Department has claimed for well over a year that the investigation is ongoing. They claimed in court in March it would be over by the end of June. Well, here we are, the beginning of September, they’re still claiming it,” he explains.

“It’s basically a stalling tactic because they don’t want this information out,” he adds.

In 2023, Leahy was hauled into court on June 17 by the presiding judge in the state case to explain why “she shouldn’t hit me with contempt of court charges.”

“She claimed that perhaps there was a court order that she’d issued that I violated. There was no such order,” Leahy explains. “It was Kafka-esque, right here in America.”

Leahy didn’t give up, as he believes it’s incredibly important for Americans to understand the motive behind a shooting like this, and Savage also notes that "the shooter's writings shed light on her poor mental health leading up to the shooting."

“This is a matter of public interest,” he says. “What is the motivation behind these mass murders committed by very troubled people, and what’s the public policy solution to it? I think that’s a very important part of the discussion.”

“We believe that we have served the public interest by demonstrating the very confused state of mind that Audrey Hale had and the absolute total failure of the mental health system to treat her for her difficulties,” he continues, noting that Hale had been under psychiatric care at Vanderbilt University Medical Center for 22 years.

“She was also taking very, very strong SSRI drugs since 2019. Those will have an impact on a person, and I think that really, the whole public discussion about this has been misdirected. They try to make it about gun control.”

The issue isn’t the weapon a person uses but why the person picks up the weapon in the first place.

“The real issue here is how our children are suffering from mental illness and not being treated properly and how they’re being overprescribed with psychiatric drugs,” Leahy says.

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