Nashville School Shooting: Federal Judge Orders Release of Transgender Shooter’s Journals

A federal judge ordered the FBI to release the writings of the transgender woman who shot and killed six people at a Christian school in Nashville on March 27, 2023.

In the hours after the shooting, Breitbart News noted that police indicated Audrey Hale identified as transgender.

Less than a month after the shooting, Breitbart News pointed out that Hale left behind a suicide note, 19 journals, and other items, and all of them have been kept from the public since the attack occurred. (The exception was a November 2023 leak of three pages, purportedly from the shooter’s writings. Seven Nashville police officers were put on “administrative leave” over the leak.)

But U.S. District Court Judge Aleta Trauger has ordered the release of the writings.

Trauger wrote:

The FBI is ORDERED to produce ex parte all documents that are potentially responsive to the defendants’ Freedom of Information Act request for in camera review, with the exception that, based on the plaintiffs’ concessions in this litigation, the FBI need not produce any documents that could not reasonably be construed to bear on Audrey Hale’s motives.

Her decision is in response to a Freedom of Information Act suit filed by the parent company of the Tennessee Star, a local newspaper owned by former Breitbart contributor Michael Patrick Leahy.

“It has been long enough, and the public has an urgent right to know why this tragedy happened, how future events may be prevented, and what policies should be in place to address this and other similar tragedies,” lawyers for the Tennessee Star contended during the hearing. … “[The] FBI has no right to retain a monopoly on this information.”

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a pro-staffer for Pulsar Night Vision. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in 2010 and holds a Ph.D. in Military History, with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.