We’ve Analyzed the Covenant Shooter’s Writings: Key Takeaways

Over the past year, Joe Biden’s FBI has offered two separate justifications for refusing to release the writings of the trans-identifying mass shooter who killed three nine-year-old children and three adults at a Christian school in Nashville.

The FBI’s first justification — the one they used in court — was that releasing the documents might interfere with a pending law enforcement investigation. That justification never made any sense because the shooter is dead, and to this day, the FBI hasn’t named any additional suspects.

At the same time, in private communications with authorities in Tennessee, the FBI outlined a different rationale. They warned that releasing the shooter’s writings would lead to “conspiracy theories” and “false narratives.” Never mind the fact that the FBI’s job isn’t to police “false narratives” — and if it were, the FBI would have raided every corporate media office and arrested nearly every mainstream journalist and news anchor in the country by now. The point is that, according to Biden’s government, for one reason or another, you’re not supposed to see what this shooter wrote. If she had been a white supremacist, of course, you’d see it instantly. But in this case, you’re not allowed to.

Meanwhile, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, which reportedly treated the shooter for psychological problems for more than twenty years, has refused to answer basic questions about what drugs the shooter may have been taking, and what kind of treatment she may have been receiving.

What this means is that, from the health establishment to the federal government, the privacy interests of a mass murderer are getting priority. The safety of the public is being ignored. And the truth, the full story — whatever it is — is being suppressed.

Wherever you fall on the political spectrum this is a national scandal. The point of transparency is not to demonize anyone who may be suffering from mental illness, or to “marginalize” any particular group of people. The point of transparency in this case is to give the public the information it has a right to know — and to likely save people’s lives in the process. It’s to identify what’s not working in the mental health treatment pipeline, and to fix it. This is a matter of urgent national importance, as it would seem that when it comes to the medical establishment’s approach to mental health, there is quite a lot that isn’t working. And contrary to what the FBI said, it’s the absence of transparency that leads to “false narratives” like the ones we’ve seen in the last year about the Covenant shooting.

That’s what brings us to today. I am going to exclusively cover several pages from the writings of the Covenant School shooter. The Daily Wire obtained these documents, and now I will go through them, for the first time. The documents reveal obviously newsworthy information about the shooter’s possible motivation — information that the government had no good-faith basis for hiding from the public.

WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show

But before we review the documents, I wanted to make a few things clear. First of all, for people who watch my podcast on YouTube: You should know that on YouTube — more than other major platforms — it’s difficult if not basically impossible to discuss sensitive and important topics like this. The censors on YouTube are extremely overzealous, especially when it comes to any story relating to trans ideology, and especially when it comes to this story in particular. If you saw my previous podcast coverage of the Tennessee Star’s reporting on the shooter’s writings, you know that we had to cut the monologue from the YouTube broadcast last week. We’re going to try to avoid cutting as much of it this time but there’s no way around it. If you want my unredacted full monologue, you’ll probably have to go elsewhere — we post the podcast on Spotify, Apple, Twitter, Rumble, and of course here on The Daily Wire’s website and app. This is a situation completely outside of my control. But the good news is that you can still get the full monologue and all of the important information I’m going to relay to you.

Finally, I wanted to note that some of the victims’ families have made it clear that they don’t want to see the shooter’s writings, or have them published. That’s obviously understandable. No one can imagine what they’re going through, and there are real concerns about glorifying or amplifying the words of a mass murderer. If I was in their shoes, I would probably feel as they do.

It is my personal opinion that there is a conspiracy to cover up the truth about this shooting and what led to it. But the families, obviously, are not a part of any conspiracy. They have their own totally understandable reasons for not wanting this stuff made public. I sympathize with them, and certainly don’t want to contribute in any way to their suffering.

The reason I am covering these documents is that I honestly believe the full truth could save lives. We still don’t know the full truth. But now we can get closer to it. Ultimately, as one court in Tennessee has already ruled, and as I’ll explain shortly, the public interest in this case is clear and overwhelming. And with that in mind, we’re going ahead with the story. But I will note that we will not be monetizing this article or podcast episode. I want to simply relay this information. We’re not looking to make any money off of it.

The first entry that we’ve obtained in the shooter’s handwritten writings reads as follows. This part is addressed to someone named “Paige.” We don’t know who that is. But in context, it may refer to a Nashville radio host who previously played basketball with the shooter in eighth grade, and who reportedly called the authorities because the shooter messaged her on the day of the attack. From the shooter’s writing:

Dear Paige, Aren’t parents manipulative? It’s total ignorance when parents step in and try to change their child’s environment. Make them go to youth group and force Christian friends in their life because the old ones were a ‘bad’ influence, I can’t f[-ing] stand that s[—]. Parents actually believe religion can change nature. That could explain why I don’t practice religion anymore. Let kids think for themselves, listening to parents does no damned good but to mold their premature minds into a pre-formated program: like clones do? The very manipulative forms teens hate? And rebel to? Kids are not robots. We are the future! That’s how its meant 2 be. 2 idea one mind; that’s all nature needs.

The writings continue:

You did life the way you wanted to. It was 100% your hearts desire (needs) No one else but you that planned it! Why I admire you; so independent so young, me young too, and what I desire, to die and be with you. My ultimate plan, thought from no one else but me. I am who I am. You are who we are. Nature is pure its raw form.

20/ For now, this is the information we have: pic.twitter.com/r3LlYJPWfZ

— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) June 12, 2024

You might remember that when this shooting took place, there were some reports that the shooter may have had a personal motivation for attacking the Covenant School. Some people suggested, without any evidence, that the shooter might have been abused by someone at the school, for example. But from these writings, that doesn’t appear to be the case, and there’s been no evidence to come out to support that theory. That was a “false narrative,” to be sure, but it wasn’t the kind of false narrative the FBI cared about.

Instead, these documents are evidence that the shooter harbored a more general anti-Christian animus.

“Parents actually believe religion can change nature,” she wrote. “That could explain why I don’t practice religion anymore. Let kids think for themselves, listening to parents does no damned good.”

Immediately, you can understand why the media — along with the highest levels of the FBI and the White House — saw this document as radioactive. This is pretty much a verbatim recounting of what every media outlet and mainstream politician on the Left has been saying for the past decade. And this is in addition to the writings from the shooter that Steven Crowder released last year, in which she describes her own anti-white sentiments, referring to white people as “little crackers” with “white privileges.”

Of course, that’s a popular sentiment on the Left these days. So is the idea that children can consent to hormones that cause sterilization, “puberty blockers” that stunt bone development, and even physical castration and other permanently disfiguring surgeries.

So is the idea, championed by BLM, that children don’t need a stable nuclear family to thrive. And so is the idea that it’s a felony to leave skid marks on a Pride mural stenciled on the street, even as it’s completely fine for arsonists to torch Christian churches just outside the White House gates.

Call these beliefs what you want — anarcho-tyranny, Marxism, or something else. It’s what the Left now believes. And it’s the ideology that — based on these writings — seems to have driven a very troubled adult woman away from her own family. That was her support system, which she obviously needed.

The rest of the shooter’s writings that we’ve obtained only reinforce that point. Fragments of these writings have been reported already by the Tennessee Star, but today we can publish the full source documents. This is from an entry dated March 11, 2023, just a few weeks before the shooting. In these documents, the shooter makes it very clear that she suffered severely from gender dysphoria.

Most of this passage is very graphic. Suffice it to say that the shooter says that she “swear[s] to god” that she’s really a male. She goes into great detail about her sexual fantasies, including having sexual relations with a woman. This is a long and distressing description of her gender dysphoria. It’s all right there, plain as day. And then she says something extremely revealing: “Having a brain like mine has its godliness, but also prone to making poor ass decisions.”

In that one quote you can see the direct contrast between the teachings of Christianity and the teachings of gender ideology. Christians believe that people are made in the image and likeness of God. They also believe that God, not man, has divine power. But gender ideology proclaims the opposite. It teaches that man is capable of changing his very nature, at the snap of a finger — that people can be born in the wrong bodies, and that gender clinics and prescription drugs can fix God’s mistakes.

This is an ideology that is, at its core, antithetical to Christianity. Was it one of the reasons this shooter was motivated to kill Christians — and by the same token, why the White House and the FBI tried to cover up the shooter’s writings? These are questions people have been asking since the shooting first happened. The people asking those questions were condemned by the media and the government. Now we have the documents. And now there’s all the more reason to be asking those questions.

Remember, in the wake of this shooting, corporate media outlets and the White House press secretary both told you that the so-called “trans community” was the real victim here, even as Christian men, women and children lay dead. That was all incidental, we were told. They didn’t want you to realize that, in her own words, the shooter described her disdain for religion very clearly just before the shooting.

There are other grievances in these documents along these lines. For example, in the document, the shooter writes that she’s upset that her new masculine identity apparently wasn’t accepted on a job form at Instacart. She also says she resents that she was never given puberty blockers.

The torture of being raised a girl. … It was only until my early 20s I finally found the answer – that changing ones gender is possible.

But this “answer,” as the shooter refers to it, apparently wasn’t much of a solution. If anything, it apparently emboldened this lifelong psychiatric patient into committing an act of horrific violence.

As the entry continues, the shooter also lashes out at her mother, saying, “What she believes, how she grew up conservatively, and that LGBTQ – especially transgender in her era was an enigma, nearly non-existent.” Then she elaborates on this grievance.

Pain of losing a daughter? That’s not pain, that’s selfishness. Just like any rest of the parents with that mindset. … How could they not ever think of their own child suffering, and that they hate their gender so bad they cut and want to kill themselves? F[—] parents like them who think of themselves first, and their preference of conservative religion – gay s[—] make them believe that the child they’re given should stay that way. Even if transgender treatment was discovered and tested during my time, I know how the situation would have turned out. My mother would not have payed a cent. Children who were able to successfully take puberty blockers and never enter a tortured puberty, those little f[—–] don’t know how good they f[—–] have it. I’d kill to have parents who would let their child be happy no matter how different it is to their view points or dont agree or scared of it. They are willing to listen to their children, not the other way around. I’d kill to have those resources; 2007 was the birth of puberty blockers and a newfound discovery for treatment of non-conforming transgender children. 2007 was when I was in the 6th grade. Puberty already hit me.

The shooter then goes on to graphically describe how she made a stuffed male doll have simulated intercourse with a stuffed girl doll, who represented “the dream girl” that she “wished to have in real life.” Again, it’s very graphic, but you can see what she wrote in the image above. This very disturbing entry ends with the shooter saying that she was sexually aroused by what she did with the dolls, concluding that she’s a “pervert” who “waste[s] too much time in [her] fantasies.”

Just a few days ago, The Tennessee Star reported on what those fantasies may have entailed:

Retired Metro Nashville Police Department Lt. Garet Davidson told Michael Patrick Leahy, CEO and editor-in-chief of The Tennessee Star, that … the Covenant School killer, received treatment from the Vanderbilt Psychiatric Hospital, where professionals failed to report her violent fantasies to law enforcement.

Davidson wasn’t involved in the shooting investigation in his official capacity, but he’s seen more documents as part of the probe, due to a leak, than we have.

According to Davidson:

My impression from what I was seeing in some documents is that the therapist had actually made a forced committal to them to get treatment [for the shooter] …. I assume [Vanderbilt Psych] attempted to render mental health treatment, psychological treatment, but as far as I know, I don’t think they reported out and said that there were specific ideations with a plan and they didn’t notify the police. That’s where I think the public would want to know, if they had done that, and then had detectives received that information, looked and saw that she had obtained firearms or might’ve possessed them, had a reason to believe that, and then conducted a search warrant, it’s reasonable to believe, now we have the benefit of hindsight, that maybe these firearms could have been seized.

We reached out to Vanderbilt University Medical Center about this report. We wanted to know if there was any truth to the claim that they failed to notify law enforcement of the shooter’s violent fantasies. We also wanted to know whether the shooter — who had been in their care for a very long time, since she was a young child — was receiving any kind of talk therapy or hormone therapy related to her gender dysphoria. The exact drugs she was taking when she lashed out violently would seem to be a detail that is very important to the public — especially to any parents who may have their kids on the same drugs.

So, wherever you stand on the issue of trans ideology, these are critical questions. But Vanderbilt hasn’t responded to us. They’ve also refused to respond to the Tennessee Star. And that tells you a lot.

Think of it this way: Even if Vanderbilt had to respect HIPPA laws here — even if they were barred by law from disclosing any details about their treatment of this shooter, and even if those regulations still remain in place after a patient dies, even if we accept that for the sake of argument — you think they’d at least say as much. They could put out a statement explaining that a law passed by Congress prevents them from sharing this obviously relevant information — information that other medical providers and the public could use to help prevent future attacks like this.

This woman was reportedly a patient of Vanderbilt’s for many years. What treatments did they give her? What treatments did they fail to give her? The answers to these questions could save lives. But Vanderbilt remains quiet. For some reason, they’re refusing to say anything at all.

All we know is that, as the Tennessee Star reported based on the police search warrant, that the shooter had been prescribed SSRIs. That’s all we have. You’d hate to think there might be ideological reasons for this response, but at this point, it’s hard not to wonder. You might remember that it was just a couple of years ago that I exposed a Vanderbilt physician, on camera, saying that she was proud of her new gender clinic at Vanderbilt because it made the hospital a lot of money. That revelation led to the closure of Vanderbilt’s gender clinic for kids, as well as legislation in Tennessee and all over the country.

But Vanderbilt, as far as I can tell, never fired the physician who made those remarks. And now they’re ignoring the media completely, after a trans-identifying individual — someone who had been in their care for more than two decades — committed mass murder.

In response to this story, a lot of people will probably say: “So what if this person identified as transgender? She was clearly mentally ill. And mentally ill people come in all shapes and sizes — some are transgender and some aren’t.” And you know what? That’s true. Nobody would deny that. But it still raises the question of whether this shooter’s transgender status affected her treatment in any way. We all know that institutions like Vanderbilt generally affirm patients’ “gender identities.”

Here, to my mind, is perhaps the biggest question, of most urgent importance: Did Vanderbilt’s commitment to affirmation in any way interfere with their ability to give this person the treatment she needed? Is that why she apparently wasn’t referred for involuntary commitment? Is that why she wasn’t barred from buying and possessing firearms? We don’t know. But we need to know. It is truly a matter of life and death.

Fortunately, we might soon have more answers. This cannot be the end of this story, and we have reason to believe it won’t be. There is a very real possibility that within a matter of days, we could receive more excerpts of the shooter’s writings. And the court fight to release the entire manifesto, in the meantime, continues.

Whatever that manifesto contains, there’s no chance at this point that any mainstream institution — not Vanderbilt, not the FBI, and certainly not the White House — will tell the truth about it. That’s why the only solution is transparency. It’s well past time we stopped treating these writings as a state secret. To prevent more loss of life, based on everything we’ve seen and more importantly what we haven’t seen, we have no other choice.

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