(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) The release of the Nashville transgender shooter’s manifesto has been delayed by the FBI because it provides a “blueprint on total destruction,” the New York Post reported.
Audrey Hale opened fire on schoolchildren last month, killing six before being gunned down by local police. In the subsequent investigation, officials discovered a manifesto, among other things, in Hale’s apartment.
Yet authorities have still not released the manifesto, despite the growing public pressure to do so.
Local politicians also warned about the release of the journal’s contents.
Metro Nashville Council Member Courtney Johnston said that the FBI has decided not to release the manifesto in the near future.
“What I was told is, her manifesto was a blueprint on total destruction, and it was so, so detailed at the level of what she had planned,” Johnston said. “That document in the wrong person’s hands would be astronomically dangerous.”
Johnston also noted that, though parts of Hale’s writings would eventually be released, “the vast, overwhelming majority of it” would constitute a threat to public safety.
“I personally don’t want to know the depths to which her psychosis reached … When I’m told by an MNPD high-ranking official that it keeps him up at night, I’m going to defer to that person in that agency that I don’t need to read that.”
Others, however, argued that people have a right to know what the manifesto contains.
Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., said that the manifesto would help clarify Hale’s motives.
It “could maybe tell us a little bit about what’s going on inside of her head,” Burchett said. “I think that would answer a lot of questions,” he added.
Joseph Giacalone, a professor at the City University of New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said the manifesto should be released, “even if it’s heavily redacted.”
“I think what the FBI is really concerned here with, and I think law enforcement, is that if there is something in there that is truly damaging for the transgender community, I think they are hesitant to do it because they are afraid of a violent backlash against that protected class of people,” he said.
