Tom Pappert, lead reporter at The Tennessee Star, said the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has the opportunity under the new leadership of Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino to reform its standard when investigating mass killers, specifically its policy regarding legacy tokens.
In May 2023, nearly two months after the 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 that releasing “legacy tokens,” which the FBI defined in 2018 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.
Pappert, noting the change in leadership among the FBI under the new Trump administration, should work to “get rid” of its procedure to protect shooters’ legacy tokens and instead pivot to a new procedure that promotes the “freedom of ideas” and “informing the public.”
“We have Kash Patel and Dan Bongino in these key positions where we could fix this and get rid of whatever this is and make sure that we establish a new standard operating procedure that tilts in favor, let’s say, of freedom of ideas and informing the public,” Pappert said on The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
Pappert went on to point out how the FBI’s policy on legacy tokens appears to be implemented only in certain cases, including the Covenant School shooting carried out by transgender killer, and not others, for example the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump in Florida.
“We have some evidence suggesting this is not a uniform thing that is done in every single mass shooting because Ryan Routh, the alleged second person to attempt to assassinate Donald Trump last year, the government itself released a letter he wrote from jail. This would seem to fly in the face of legacy tokens…So they’re seeming to contradict their own stated policy through this memo,” Pappert added.
On Thursday, The Star filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requesting the FBI provide all of its internal records regarding “legacy tokens,” including those related to the May 2023 memo sent to MNPD regarding the Covenant School shooting.
Watch the full hour:
Here’s the 2nd hour of the Michael Patrick Leahy show today, featuring our lead reporter Tom Pappert @realTomPappert talking about the origin of the idea of “Legacy Tokens” at the FBI, starting at the 32:00 mark:https://t.co/0gorFwmdtC
— MichaelPatrick Leahy (@michaelpleahy) February 26, 2025
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
