On March 27, 2023, a radical cross-dresser broke into a Christian elementary school in Nashville and murdered three 9-year-olds (Evelyn Diekhaus, William Kinney, and Harry Scruggs) and three adults (teacher Cynthia Peake, janitor Mike Hill, and principal Katherine Koonce).
The Metropolitan Nashville Police Department declined to release a motive for the attack, sparking months of speculation about possible anti-Christian themes, incendiary rhetoric from LGBT activists, or unstable transgender drugs as factors, and the FBI appears to be trying to keep the public unaware of the motives of the shooter, particularly the cross-dressed man.
After a year of uncertainty and Democratic efforts to use the mass murder to push for gun control, the truth is now clear thanks to Michael Patrick Leahy, CEO of StarNews Digital Media and editor of the Tennessee Star, who released the shooter’s suicide note and other documents obtained from an anonymous source.
was suggested It’s more like an MNPD investigation.
Leahy may ultimately pay the price for doing his job and protecting his sources.
Stacey Cameron, a reporter for the local Fox News affiliate,
In effect, he was tipped off. The Tennessee Star detailed the shooter’s leaked documents. Asia Miles Judge John Lee, a Democrat in Tennessee’s 20th Judicial District Court of Chancery, Division 3, last week ordered Leahy to appear in court for a show-cause hearing.
“This lowest-level court judge is being pressured by someone well above his pay grade.”
The purpose of the hearing, scheduled for Monday, is to “determine whether the publication of certain documents by the applicants, Star Digital Media and its editor-in-chief, Michael Leahy, violates this Court’s order finding them in contempt of court and imposing sanctions against them.”
Blaze News investigative reporter Steve Baker, who was himself arrested earlier this year for his journalistic work, attended the hearing and spoke with Leahy about the dangers of reporting on things the liberal media seems keen to ignore.
“My sense is that this very low-ranking judge is being pressured by someone much higher up in the payroll to bring a case against a local journalist who lawfully obtained documents and information about one of the most significant mass shootings in the country last year,” Judge Baker told The Blaze News. “This was clearly a situation where the FBI did not want these documents and statements made public.”
Baker suggested the aim was to block the release of documents that those in power deem “inappropriate because, again, there is a privileged class, or subclass, of citizens who are transgender people,” and that such incriminating information could also relate to the use of lucrative antidepressants and puberty suppressants.
“The document is a public document and should be made public.”
The Blaze News reached out to the ACLU and its Nashville chapter about the possibility of newspaper reporters being punished for doing their jobs. No response was received by deadline. PEN America and Freedom House similarly did not respond to questions about their ostensibly selective support for embattled reporters.
background
When it became clear that authorities would not reveal a motive or the gunman’s documents, the Tennessee Rifle Association and the Nashville Police Association unsuccessfully sued to force authorities to release the gunman’s manifesto and other documents.
After the FBI denied the public records request, Leahy’s Tennessee Star also filed a lawsuit.
“These documents are public records and should be made public. Metro government did not release them. We politely requested but they did not. They shared these documents with the FBI but we politely requested them according to the law. If government agencies do not follow the law then we can sue them through the courts,” Leahy said.
In addition to pressure from press freedom and local groups, law enforcement officials have received a request from 77 Republican members of the Tennessee House of Representatives for “documentation, relevant medical records and toxicology reports” on the cross-dressing shooter.
MNPD delayed its response, first asking the court to allow the victims’ families and others involved to challenge the release of the documents.
Sure enough, Covenant Presbyterian Church and its associated schools filed a motion to block the manifesto’s release, citing privacy concerns. Parents whose children attend the school also filed a motion in May 2023 to oppose the manifesto’s release, voicing concerns that its contents could inspire future mass shootings — nearly identical arguments made by the FBI that same month.
The Blaze News previously reported that officials from the FBI’s Major Incident Response Group I have written On May 11, 2023, he spoke to Nashville Police Chief John Drake about the value of curbing so-called “legacy tokens,” arguing that “public access to legacy tokens would open the door to future attacks.”
The FBI also warned that failing to conceal the truth from the public could lead to “the spread of false narratives and inaccurate information” and even sensational “conspiracy theories” from unlicensed experts.
The success of the supposedly federally backed cover-up was undermined when conservative commentator Steven Crowder published three pages of the manifesto that were later verified to be authentic. Nashville’s Democratic mayor vowed to investigate the leak, and seven Minnesota State Police troopers were placed on administrative duty.
The investigation was fruitless.
The issue of releasing the remaining documents was pending consideration in Davidson County Court in Miles.
Newspaper reporter ordered to appear in court
Deborah Fisher of the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government said Miles
Issued an order In February, documents in the case stated that “regardless of how they were obtained, they will not be filed with the Court but will be submitted for private review in accordance with the procedures established in this case. … Any attempt by any party, counsel or amici to unreasonably violate the orders of the Court in any matter currently under private review will be punished to the fullest extent of the law, including for contempt of court.”
This order and subsequent orders appear to be the orders that Mr Leahy is alleged to have violated.
Fox News affiliates have given Miles a call with the Tennessee Star
Reports Earlier this month, it was revealed that the FBI had floated the idea of destroying the shooter’s documents and that he had been treated at Vanderbilt Psychiatric Hospital for decades and expressed violent delusions. Ordered Mr. Leahy attended the show-cause hearing in his personal capacity.
Leahy’s lawyer, Daniel Horowitz, said:
June 12 court filing Court show cause orders in Tennessee Shielding Method Horowitz also suggested the newly appointed Democratic judge’s order violates Tennessee’s contempt law, “deprives Mr. Leahy of minimal due process guarantees,” and suffers from “other serious constitutional flaws.”
Court documents further indicated that Miles’ order did not specify the “order of this court” that was allegedly violated.
“This is what freedom of the press is for.”
“In a contempt action, ‘the order on which the complaint is based must be clear, specific, and unambiguous,'” Horowitz wrote. “The conduct detailed in the court’s show cause order is [the court’s] Previous missions.”
Judge Miles refused to vacate the order, saying that if the court “concludes that a breach has actually occurred by any of the parties in this case and that such conduct is in violation of an order of this court, or that there has been an abuse or unlawful interference with the process or procedure of a court, or a violation as provided in Tennessee Code Annotated Section 29-9-102, this court may enter an order and notice appointing counsel as amicus curiae to the court for the purposes of investigation and for the initiation and prosecution of contempt charges.”
Baker said that if contempt is charged, Leahy could face 10 days in jail for each violation. With at least 30 violations published this month, the newspaper’s journalists could face hundreds of days in prison.
“Welcome to the club,” Baker said this week as he spoke to newspaper reporters about a possible legal battle over faithfully fulfilling his journalistic duties.
Leahy suggested to Baker that 10 days would be a breeze — but not when it takes hundreds of days to fulfill journalistic obligations.
Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeff Clark spoke in Leahy’s defense on Thursday. Focus on it“The threat against Mike Leahy seems like a bizarre mix of 1) a violation of the First Amendment prohibiting prior restraint of speech, 2) a threat to violate some mysterious law like the Alvin Bragg lawsuit against Trump (‘Now, folks, pick a plus-up crime. Any plus-up crime will do.’) and 3) a weaponization of contempt law like what’s happening to Fulton County Judge Granville in the Young Thug trial.”
“What is going on in America? It appears that parts of state judiciaries across multiple states have collectively lost their minds,” Clark added.
“The American public has a right to know the details of how Hale was radicalized by the transgender movement, and the victim’s family especially has a right to know that information. That’s what a free press is for,” Clark continued. “A free press is not there to coddle the transgender movement or hide secrets that could kill people out of ignorance.”
State Rep. Jeremy Faison (Republican) I got it. Tennessee Legislature ‘will not tolerate activist judges weaponizing the courts’ [Leahy] He is in the press and does not need to prove his innocence in court.”
Republican State Senator Ken Yeager Said He said he would support Faison’s resolution to remove “judges who engage in such misconduct.”
Regarding the relative silence from liberal media and press freedom groups about Sen. Leahy’s court appearance on Monday, Baker suggested that the First Amendment is “either fundamental to the freedom of all people, or it is merely based on ideological preference.”
“It’s so interesting to me to hear conservatives and libertarians say over and over again, ‘I’m willing to die for your right to say what you want to say, even if I disagree,’ but you never get the same response from the other side,” Baker added.
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