Michael Patrick Leahy, host of the Tennessee Star Report and CEO and editor of Star News Digital Media, Inc., filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the FBI for withholding the Covenant School shooter’s manifesto under the Freedom of Information Act.
Michael Patrick Leahy, Tennessee Star host and owner of Star News Digital Media, filed suit against the FBI over its withholding of the Covenant School shooter’s manifesto.
Nashville police have said they collected writings of the shooter, Audrey Hale, after she killed six people, including three children, at The Covenant School in Nashville on March 27. They initially characterized the writings as a manifesto and said they shared the writings with the FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit.
Star News national political editor Matthew Kittle first requested the documents from the FBI on April 20 under the federal Freedom of Information Act.
“The Manifesto is alleged to reveal the motivations of Audrey Hale. These motivations are not only relevant to my reporting, but important for public safety and therefore of intense national media interest,” the request said. Later, the request clarified the records sought as “the notes, journal entries, plans, letters, writings, or other documents making up what law enforcement officials have labeled as Audrey Hale’s ‘manifesto.'”
FBI denies request for shooter’s manifesto
The FBI denied the request on April 25, citing that 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(7)(A) exempts from disclosure law enforcement records or information that “could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings.”
“(T)here is a pending or prospective law enforcement proceeding relevant to these responsive records, and the release of the information could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings,” the FBI said.
The Star News network filed an administrative appeal and was denied again.
In the lawsuit, Leahy and his company argue that there is no enforcement proceeding as the shooter is dead and that the Nashville police on April 27 even said they were preparing the manifesto for release.
“Then again, on May 3, MNPD (Metro Nashville Police Department) backtracked and said it would not release the manifesto, but did not cite any interference with ‘enforcement proceedings'” but instead cited litigation filed in Davidson County Chancery Court. Two public records lawsuits have been filed in Chancery Court against Metro Nashville over denial of access to the records under the Tennessee Public Records Act.
The lawsuit cites three other mass shootings which the FBI investigated and in which manifestos of the shooters were obtained by news media from one day to three weeks after the shootings. “FBI itself if proud of its history of releasing manifestos. In 1995, FBI famously released Ted Kaczynski’s manifesto to The Washington Post, The New York Times, and Penthouse magazine,” referring to the “Unabomber” who killed and injured people by mailing bombs to them between 1978 and 1995.
Exemption does not ‘endlessly protect material’ from disclosure
Citing the 1978 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in NLRB v. Robbins Tire & Rubber Co., the lawsuit says that the foremost purpose of the law enforcement exemption is to prevent “harm [to] the Government’s case in court…’This exemption does not ‘endlessly protect material simply because it was in an investigatory file.'”
“[E]ven if one interpreted ‘enforcement proceedings’ to include FBI’s evaluation of a manifesto after the death of the assailant, it is hard to understand how allowing the public to see the manifesto would ‘interfere’ with that investigation. Whatever ‘interference’ exists must be supported by the FBI with evidence. FBI has identified no legitimate reason why the public should be prohibited from seeing the manifesto. And FBI’s own recent history, as well as public statements by MNPD, demonstrate why there is no legitimate basis to withhold a manifesto from a deceased assailant.”
The plaintiffs are represented by Daniel P. Lennington of Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty Inc. and Matthew J. McClanahan of Knoxville.
