Nashville police have denied The Daily Wire‘s request for a copy of a manifesto or diary from the transgender killer who shot up a Christian school March 27, leaving six dead, including three 9-year-olds.
It has been 25 days since the shocking shooting spree, in which the killer — a woman who identified as a man and who this publication is not naming to avoid giving notoriety to shooters — carried out the massacre at the Covenant School before being gunned down by police. City Council members said shortly after the incident that there was a “manifesto” and that it would be released. But since then, state and local police have gotten “assistance” from the FBI in psychologically profiling the killer, which has been used as a reason to block release of the materials.
On Friday, the Metro Nashville Police Department denied a public records request from The Daily Wire, which is also based in Nashville, for the manifesto and journals, replying “The investigation is still an open case. … Once the case is closed, please re-request at a later date.”
It is unclear what the open case is seeking to learn, since the perpetrator is dead.
City Councilman Robert Swope previously told The Daily Wire there would be no reason to withhold the manifesto once the investigation is closed.
Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Director David Rausch has said that officials recovered multiple documents: a detailed plan and also “some journal-type rantings.”
Metro Nashville Council Member Courtney Johnston said that the chilling level of detail in the plan was being used as justification to withhold it, saying “That document in the wrong person’s hands would be astronomically dangerous.”
But that doesn’t explain not releasing rantings that could give insight into the shooter’s motives, which came as trans activists were angry at Tennessee legislators for passing laws dealing with radical gender ideology.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILYWIRE+ APP
Nor does it explain the FBI’s involvement. The FBI would only have jurisdiction if it was a hate crime or domestic terrorism. But Elizabeth Clement-Webb, a spokesperson for the Memphis Field Office of the FBI — which includes Nashville — told The Daily Wire shortly after the shooting that the FBI was merely offering some assistance and “at this time it does not appear to be federal.”
If the shooter’s writings are not released, the public won’t know if the FBI decided to ignore compelling interest of a hate crime. The lack of official information on the motive has permitted media outlets to look past it as an instance of potential terrorism, which is defined as “Violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups to further ideological goals stemming from domestic influences, such as those of a political, religious, social, racial, or environmental nature.”
The Department of Justice under President Joe Biden has frequently sought to characterize Right-wing domestic terrorism as one of the most severe threats faced by the country, despite leftists dominating the FBI’s list of most-wanted domestic terrorists.
NBC News wrote last week that the “Motive in Nashville shooting remains unclear weeks after 6 people were killed at a Christian school.”
Meanwhile, Democrats have ignored the shooting as potentially inflicted by a Left-wing terrorist, quickly pivoting to gun control and the expulsion of two Democrat state lawmakers who participated in an unruly gun-control protest in the state capitol.