In the three pages released last week from Covenant Killer Audrey Elizabeth Hale’s manifesto and related writings, the hand-written notes were filled with racial and anti-LGBT slurs. Hale expressed at great length her hatred for white people, and in particular, her animus for the white children at the private Christian elementary school.
However, officials at the FBI won’t say whether or not they are handling the investigation of the March 27 school shootings as a hate crime.
“As this matter is being addressed by the courts, the FBI will not be commenting on the reported documents,” Elizabeth Clement-Webb, Public Affairs and Community Engagement officer for the FBI’s Memphis Field Office told The Tennessee Star in a Monday email.
The agency has yet to confirm the authenticity of the manifesto pages published online by conservative commentator and comedian Steven Crowder even thought the Metro Nashville Police Department and others have. Instead, the FBI is taking cover behind ongoing lawsuits — filed by The Star News Network — demanding the manifesto’s release.
While the Biden-led Department of Justice has been quick to charge hate crimes in incidents involving white supremacists, it has been extremely slow to label the murders of three 9-year-olds and three adult staff members at Nashville’s Presbyterian Covenant School a mass shooting motivated by hate.
Hale, a white biological woman who identified as a man named Aiden, goes on a racist tirade in the pages Crowder published last Monday. Crowder has said the writings expose a radicalized leftist “steeped … in the modern progressive ideology.”
On one page, Hale writes, “Wanna kill all you little crackers!! Bunch of little faggots w/your white privaleges [sic].”
The killer, who had for a time attended Covenant Presbyterian School, also scrawled on a page dated Feb. 2, 2023 about the students “going to fancy private schools with those fancy kwakis [Sic] + sports backpacks w/ their daddies mustangs + convertibles.”
“Can’t believe I’m doing this, but I’m ready … I hope my victims aren’t,” Hale wrote on what the killer billed as “Death Day” on a page dated 3/27/23 — the day of the mass shootings.
Last week, attorneys for Star News Digital Media Inc., the parent company of The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network, filed a new motion in its lawsuit seeking limited discovery to compel the FBI to definitively state whether the documents were written by Hale.
Nicholas Barry, senior counsel for civil rights law firm America First Legal, said the three pages of the Hale manifesto necessitate the full release of the records. Barry represents Star News Digital Media Inc. and The Tennessee Star in a multi-plaintiff lawsuit against Metro Nashville.
Metro Law Director Wally Dietz insists that a judge’s order precludes MNPD from releasing the manifesto until the lawsuit is settled. Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell has said he stands by Dietz’s legal opinion, an argument that Barry says doesn’t hold water.
“The Court has not ordered that these records remain sealed until the Court decides whether they should be released. The decision to release records is Metro’s decision, and it is Metro’s burden to prove that there is a valid justification for their nondisclosure,” the attorney said. “At a minimum, those records should be released immediately.”
A spokeswoman for MNPD told The Tennessee Star she wasn’t sure whether Hale’s actions would fall under the state’s hate crime enhancer law because “she’s dead.” Hale was fatally shot by responding police officers 14 minutes into her deadly rampage.
The MNPD spokeswoman advised The Star to contact the FBI.
It’s an important legal question. Beyond criminal penalties, “Tennessee law is clear that victims of hate crimes are also allowed to seek special civil damages from their attackers,” according to the Chattanooga Bar Association.
As the Federalist noted: When a gunman in Buffalo, NY, opened fire in a grocery store, killing 10 in 2022, President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice used the shooter’s racist social media posts as justification to deem the act “a hate crime and an act of racially-motivated violent extremism” worthy of several federal hate crime charges. The Justice Department extended the same treatment to Dylann Roof and the Texas mass shooter who killed 23 people at an El Paso Wal-Mart.
As The Tennessee Star’s lawsuit against the FBI notes, the agency has in the Hale case contradicted its own position in swiftly releasing similar records of other mass murderers.
In October, Orlando Harris killed two and injured seven people in St. Louis. The FBI investigated the incident with other law enforcement authorities. CNN obtained a copy of and reported on the details of his manifesto the day after the shootings.
Nearly a month later, Andre Marcus Bing killed seven people and injured four at a Walmart Supercenter in Chesapeake, VA. The FBI investigated the incident with other law enforcement authorities, and within three days, the New York Times obtained the killer’s manifesto.
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M.D. Kittle is the National Political Editor for The Star News Network.
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