Tom Pappert, lead reporter at The Tennessee Star, called on the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to release the long-awaited documents relating to the Covenant School shooting as the bureau’s deputy director, Dan Bongino, said he and Director Kash Patel are moving to address “transparency issues” that have plagued the federal agency in recent years.
On Sunday, Bongino announced on X that he will “be posting regular information updates” about the FBI’s transparency efforts, further saying that the public will “absolutely see results.”
Bongino’s statement on transparency comes as the much-anticipated documents relating to the Covenant School shooting and the late billionaire and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein continue to be withheld from the public.
Noting how Patel was sworn into the role more than a month ago on February 21, and Bongino being in the role for two weeks, Pappert said the FBI’s silence surrounding The Star’s request for all 1,000 handwritten pages left by Covenant School killer Audrey Elizabeth Hale to be released may be a sign that Patel and Bongino do not have control over the rank and file of the agency.
“I think the question is can they get their agents reigned in? Can they get control of this agency? Will the president give them permission to hire and fire and promote and demote,” Pappert said on Monday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
“I think these are the moves that we need to see in order to know that we’re going to see real transparency improvements,” Pappert added.
Noting how he is an advocate for the release of the Epstein Files “as much as the next guy,” Pappert argued that the release of the Covenant manifesto would benefit the general public when it comes to the mental health treatments of individuals who identify as transgender, as Hale did.
“We know for a fact that this Covenant manifesto is going to help psychologists, it’s going to help parents, it’s going to help schools, it’s going to help anybody who has ever met a transgender person start to pick up the warning signs. If we go further back in these journals, the parts that have not been released that are being kept hidden by the FBI, we’ll learn more and more warning signs and it’ll tell the tale of how this ideology can grip somebody and then potentially turn them toward extreme violence,” Pappert explained.
“The fact that it hasn’t been released is ridiculous. It’s an easy thing to do and it will help the United States,” 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.
