Michael Patrick Leahy, Editor-in-Chief and CEO of The Tennessee Star, and Steve Baker, investigative journalist and opinion contributor for Blaze News, agreed that Monday’s show cause hearing ordered by Tennessee Chancery Court Judge l’Ashea Myles was “nonsense.”
Leahy was ordered to appear at Monday’s show cause hearing – which was originally intended to determine whether The Star’s publishing of information from the journal of Covenant School killer Audrey Elizabeth Hale interfered with the Tennessee lawsuit in which Leahy and The Star’s parent company, Star News Digital Media, Inc. (SNDM), are seeking to compel the full release of the killer’s writings by the Metro Nashville Police Department.
While Leahy and his legal team were prepared to show cause as to why Judge Myles shouldn’t hold Leahy in contempt for allegedly publishing documents in the case that were under her in-camera review, the judge instead insisted that the purpose of the hearing was for her to get a feeling and understanding of the “landscape” of the situation.
Judge Myles even went as far on Monday to not entertain Leahy’s defense attorney Daniel Horowitz’ questioning on the reasoning for the hearing, saying such questions are not “ripe” yet.
Baker, who attended Monday’s hearing, described Judge Myles’ conduction of the hearing as “nonsense.”
“What in the hell did I just witness? As soon as the court adjourned… I went, ‘What the you-know-what’,” Baker said on Monday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
Baker added, “Horowitz was trying to address your reason for being there and then she said, ‘That argument isn’t ripe yet.’…The nonsense that was coming out of the judge’s mouth was remarkable…She was saying over and over again that she was there today to understand all the parties. She wanted to understand everybody’s position. She reiterated over and over again that she wasn’t the investigator: ‘I’m just the judge. I’m not the prosecutor. I’m just the judge and I’m just here to get understanding.’ And she did wrap it up at the end and said, ‘Okay, now I understand.’ When court was adjourned…I said, does she understand what an airhead she is?”
To Leahy’s point about how the judge “changed the purpose” of Monday’s hearing, Baker said he believes Judge Myles backtracked her decision to consider holding Leahy in contempt after reading the Tennessee statute which protects journalists’ sources and all other information gathered for publication.
“I think she changed her mind and, it wasn’t a change of mind, I think she thought better of what she had done because she might have actually read the statute,” Baker said.
Leahy said the “bottom line” of Monday’s hearing was that while not a single attorney present at the hearing argued that Leahy broke the law, the judge may still issue an order to assign a special prosecutor to investigate and possibly prosecute him for The Star’s publishing of information from the school shooter’s journal.
“[Judge Miles] said, ‘I will take all of this information from the various lawyers’ and there were like, what, 20 lawyers there? They all weighed in on my show cause hearing as to whether or not I should be held for contempt, but that issue was never really addressed by any of them. None of them said that I’d broken the law. None of the attorneys said that. They said perhaps whoever leaked them did,” Leahy said.
“So let me give you the bottom line on all this. I thought there’d be two outcomes or possibilities. Either [the judge] was going to set up a special prosecutor to investigate and prosecute us, or she was going to take it under advisement and then issue an order later. So that’s what she did. She said, ‘I’m going to take all of this under advisement and I’ll issue an order.’ She didn’t say when. If that order is to set up a special prosecutor, I will still be in legal jeopardy. That’s my take on it,” Leahy added.
Watch the full segment here:
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Steve Baker and Michael Patrick Leahy” by The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
