Tom Pappert, lead reporter at The Tennessee Star, said there is “concern” behind the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) denial of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by The Star that sought disclosure from the agency about its “legacy tokens” concept, especially since the bureau is now officially headed by Director Kash Patel.
In May 2023, nearly two months after the March 27 Covenant School shooting, the FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit sent a memo that “strongly” advised the Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) not to release documents like the manifesto left by the killer, Audrey Elizabeth Hale, a biological woman who identified as a transgender man when she carried out the shooting.
The memo said releasing “legacy tokens,” which the FBI has previously defined as any records left by a mass killer that could explain their actions, would contribute to future attacks, fail to provide closure to victims and their families, and “facilitate false narratives and inaccurate information,” potentially leading “to unintended consequences for the segment of the population more vulnerable or open to conspiracy theories.”
In addition, the memo raised the precedent for destroying legacy tokens, noting materials from the 1999 Columbine High School attack were never released and permanently destroyed.
On Wednesday, the FBI declined The Star’s FOIA request about the bureau’s “legacy tokens” concept that was cited in the May 2023 memo to MNPD.
The Star specifically sought the FBI’s internal copy of the memo, the identity of the FBI employees who authorized and sent it, a list and copies of similar memos sent to other law enforcement agencies, and all internal communications that led to the commission of the 2018 research paper that appeared to offer the agency’s first public definition of “legacy tokens.”
The FOIA request was filed on February 27, nearly one week after Patel was sworn in as the bureau’s new director.
Pappert said the FBI’s denial of the FOIA request under Patel’s leadership is of “concern” given that the new director had previously criticized the FBI for overhauling investigations.
In a December 2023 appearance on “Glenn TV,” Patel told host Glenn Beck that the FBI Director has the “direct authority” to declassify the full of writings left by Hale.
“While I believe patience is a virtue, it is becoming a very difficult virtue to exercise here. Kash Patel and Pam Bondi both said on day one, you’re going to see things like the Epstein Files, you’re going to see the Covenant killer manifesto,” Pappert explained on Thursday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
“Instead, it’s been the opposite. It’s been more of the status quo. I think that, perhaps, Kash Patel needs to be made aware of this so he can speed up whatever sort of housecleaning he might have begun, otherwise, this runs the risk of being a stain on the Trump administration, much as the FBI and the Department of Justice were in the first term,” Pappert added.
Pappert went on to suggest the possibility that Patel, once he assumed the role as FBI director, may have become “enmeshed” in the bureau’s status quo operations and had a change of heart when it comes to declassifying information like the Covenant manifesto.
“I’m trying to be patient, I love President Trump and am very excited about this new administration, but the concern here, in my mind, is that Kash Patel, a years long critic of the FBI and the federal bureaucracy, as soon as he joined it, became either so enmeshed in it that it became ‘maybe there is a good reason why we suppress legacy tokens,’ and ‘maybe The Tennessee Star and the American public don’t deserve this and don’t deserve the Epstein files.’ This is a real concern that’s going through my mind,” Pappert said.
“I think it’s something that they need to address and they need to do it as fast as possible,” Pappert added.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Kash Patel” by Gage Skidmore CC2.0.
