Tom Pappert, lead reporter at The Tennessee Star, said the “weaponized” Department of Justice is going after everyday Americans just as former President Donald Trump predicted, pointing to the case of The Star’s CEO and Editor-in-Chief Michael Patrick Leahy, who is ordered to appear in court on Monday after his publication reported on the journal entries of Covenant School killer Audrey Elizabeth Hale.
Leahy was ordered to appear before Tennessee Chancery Court Judge l’Ashea Myles for a show cause hearing, which is a demand from a court for a party of a lawsuit to prove that they have not disobeyed any court orders.
Leahy, who is also the CEO of Star News Digital Media, Inc. (SNDM), the parent organization of The Star, faces Monday’s hearing amid a Tennessee lawsuit in which Leahy and SNDM are seeking to compel the full release of the Covenant killer’s writings by the Metro Nashville Police Department.
Should Judge Myles declare that he has disobeyed court orders by publishing the journal’s contents, Leahy faces possible contempt charges.
Pappert, on Friday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show, said Leahy being targeted by the justice system is what Trump continuously warned would happen with lawfare against conservatives as the former president, himself, has been targeted by the Department of Justice.
“I think that is the lesson here, by the way, to the audience and to conservatives…Nobody is going to be safe here. It starts with Donald Trump. It starts with Steve Bannon. It starts with Alex Jones. And before you know it, it’s your hometown conservative newspaper. It’s Michael Patrick Leahy,” Pappert explained.
“It’s not going to end here, by the way. If this doesn’t have a fierce opposition to let folks know what’s going on and spread the word, well before you know it, maybe it won’t be conservative news websites. Maybe it’ll be Fox News. Maybe it will be the biggest of the big,” Pappert added.
Touching on the significance of The Star’s reporting on the writings of the Covenant killer, Pappert said the revelations through reporting “exposes so much.”
“[The reporting] exposes so much. It exposes, what I believe, is the FBI trying to keep documents concealed. It exposes, what I believe, is a total failure of the American and specifically Nashville psychiatric and mental health community. It exposes that parents maybe shouldn’t trust these people. And it sets aside a lot of questions and answers – a lot of questions about if the parents might have caused the attack, if the school, Covenant, might have caused the attack. This really is a national news story and it’s super exciting,” Pappert said.
Pappert pointed out former acting Assistant Attorney General Jeff Clark’s notice of the legal challenge to The Star’s reporting of Hale’s writings, who called the situation an “attack on conservatives.”
Clark said, “The American people deserve to know the details of how Hale was radicalized by the trans agenda. And the victims’ family especially deserve to learn that information. This is what the free press is for. It’s not designed to coddle the trans movement or keep secrets that could get people killed through ignorance.”
– – –
Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
