Ramaswamy Holds Press Conference Demanding Release Of Trans Shooter’s Manifesto
Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy held a press conference in Nashville on Wednesday alongside a coalition of Tennessee Republicans demanding the release of the writings of Covenant School shooter Audrey Hale.
Hale, a 28-year-old woman who claimed to be a man, committed a mass shooting at the Christian school on March 27, 2023. During her rampage, she killed six people, including three nine-year-old children — Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs and William Kinney. Three staff members were also killed — 61-year-old Cynthia Peak, 61-year-old Mike Hill and the school’s 60-year-old headmaster Katherine Koonce.
Noting that he was speaking out “as a father and as an American,” Ramaswamy called out law enforcement and politicians — especially Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) — for their “stonewalled silence” about Hale’s manifesto.
“We can’t fix the past, but we can prevent tragedies in the future,” he told the crowd at the press conference. “And the only way to do it is to learn from those mistakes of the past. When an airplane crashes, we recover the black box for a reason — we never wanna make that same mistake twice.”
“We have a tradition in this country, as law enforcement, to do the same thing when there’s a mass shooting… The manifesto of the killer was made public in each of the following instances: Allen, Texas; Buffalo, New York; Charleston, South Carolina; Isla Vista, California; Monterey Park, California; Poway, California — in all cases, within 48 hours of the tragedy,” Ramaswamy continued.
“The public demanded the same happen here in Nashville immediately after the tragedy in March,” he added. “In fact, the National Police Association has since sued city officials and county officials, demanding the same. It turned out that on April 27, Gov. Bill Lee, the governor of this state, pledged to release that manifesto — yet today, we’re sitting here in August with nothing other than stonewalled silence from our government.”
Ramaswamy slammed Tennessee officials for their lack of action, noting that their failure “erodes public trust.”
“I’m here today to make a demand of the governor of Tennessee, to make a demand of the Nashville Police Department, to make a demand of the FBI — release the manifesto, speak the truth. The hard times are the times where we must most openly speak that truth,” he said.
“I understand that there are legitimate concerns that we do not want details released that will motivate copycats, I don’t want that,” he continued, adding: “But what we do need to know is this killer’s motives, this killer’s psychological state of mind. The truth of the matter is that we have a mental health epidemic in this country that is driving a wave of violence around this country — and we’re going to have to deeply understand it if we are to address it.”
Ramaswamy later pointed to a potential motive for the hesitancy in releasing the manifesto — the fact that the shooter identified as “transgender.”
“When it was a transgender individual who committed that shooting — in this particular instance — they have chosen, without explanation, not to release it and even to renege against a prior commitment to release it; that does not build trust,” he said.
