The release of Covenant School shooter Audrey Hale’s manifesto has been delayed yet again, as Metro Nashville Police Department officials claim their attorneys told them to hold off amid a pair of lawsuits.
The decision came just days after the MNPD and Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said the materials would soon see the light of day.
Police cited their attorney’s advice and blamed recent litigation for the change, bemusing the lawyer behind one of the two lawsuits filed demanding the information be released.
“It is an interesting turn of events,” lawyer John Harris told The Post. “If there was some plan to release some information … why isn’t that information being released?”
Harris is representing former Tennessee-area Sheriff James Hammond and the Tennessee Firearms Association Inc. in the lawsuit.
He said his clients’ public records requests seeking access to the documents were denied, citing the ongoing investigation. The rejection came at a time when Lee cited the Covenant shooting in pushing for a new gun control package, which would include background checks on mental health.
“If this Covenant shooting incident is the basis on which this call by the governor is going out, they’re interested to know,” he said. “Was it really a mental health issue? Was it just an outright terrorist activity? Was there some private vendetta?”
Harris further argued the MNPD’s latest decision to withhold the manifesto goes against a “state statute that makes records available to the public presumptively.”
“The answers that Metro has given so far is that there’s an ongoing criminal investigation, which — looking at the facts and the other statements that they’ve made — one might question, knowing that the only person that’s been identified in the criminal activity has been deceased for a month.”
Hale’s alleged manifesto was found in the transgender shooter’s home after the March 27 attack, which took the lives of three school staffers and three 9-year-old students.
Students Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs and William Kinney were killed, as well as school janitor Mike Hill, substitute teacher Cynthia Peak and headmistress Katherine Koonce, who reportedly ran toward the shooter to try to protect the school.
Charles Brandt, a former prosecutor and chief deputy attorney general for Delaware, has authored several books, including, most recently, “Suppressing the Truth in Dallas: Conspiracy, Cover-Up” and “International Complications in the JFK Assassination Case.”
He said he was not surprised by law enforcement’s flip-flop regarding the Covenant documents.
“For whatever reason, people in possession of documents go overboard,” he said.
Brandt added that the documents “should totally be out there. It’s criminal that they’re not out there.”
“The desire to do the right thing, although it’s what the police are claiming they’re doing,” he went on, “they’re actually doing the wrong thing.”
