Internal Affairs Investigator Arrested for Covenant School Shooting Leak

In March 2023, former Covenant School student Audrey Hale walked into the private Christian school in Nashville and murdered six people, including three 9-year-old children. Hale, who had begun identifying as male and using the name Aiden, was shot and killed by police shortly after the attack. As with every school shooting, the public demanded answers. But this time, the focus shifted quickly, not to the shooter’s access to weapons or the repeated systemic failures, but to Hale’s gender identity.

Rather than engage in a difficult but necessary discussion about assault weapon availability, Tennessee’s political and media class chose a different path. The Covenant School shooting became ground zero for a wave of transphobic hysteria. The shooter’s gender identity was used as a red herring to distract from the ease with which they legally amassed a personal armory. Conservative influencers and lawmakers immediately weaponized the tragedy to paint trans people as inherently violent. And predictably, none of them addressed the fact that Tennessee’s gun laws allowed Hale to legally purchase multiple firearms despite mental health concerns and prior family interventions.

Things escalated further in late 2023 when several pages of Hale’s alleged manifesto were leaked to right-wing media personality, and assclown, Steven Crowder. The leak appeared suspicious from the start. One of the photos included what looked like a Metro Nashville police cruiser in the background, suggesting someone within the department may have leaked evidence from an active investigation. The Metro Nashville Police Department and city officials launched an internal investigation. Seven officers were quietly placed on administrative assignment. Then…silence.

Now, we may finally have an answer as to where the leak came from, and it could be as corrupt and petty as you might expect.

On May 6th, Garet Davidson, a former lieutenant with the Metro Nashville Police Department’s Office of Professional Accountability, yep, Internal Affairs, was arrested and charged with theft, burglary, and over three dozen counts of official misconduct. The charges include six counts specifically tied to the Covenant School shooting. According to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, Davidson used his position to access restricted areas and remove numerous case files and internal documents. One of those sets of files likely included Hale’s journals.

Davidson’s home in Portland, Tennessee, had already been searched by TBI last fall. When arrested this month, he was booked on a $150,000 bond.

Davidson’s attorney claims the arrest is retaliation. According to a statement released by his legal team, Davidson is a whistleblower who tried to expose systemic corruption inside MNPD, allegedly including efforts to suppress civilian oversight, protect ranking officers from accountability, and tolerate sexual harassment and discrimination.

That all may be true. But if Davidson’s goal was to blow the whistle on departmental corruption, why leak the shooter’s writings to Steven Crowder and The Tennessee Star? Neither of those outlets are known for advocating transparency or institutional reform. What they are known for is exploiting tragedies to demonize the already marginalized. If Davidson was trying to clean up the MNPD, leaking explosive case evidence to transphobic media figures seems like a strange first step. A better one might have been submitting those records to an actual journalist or oversight body.

In the end, I don’t think Davidson was trying to reform anything. He wasn’t a whistleblower. He was a ‘transvestigator,’ one of those obsessive right-wing sleuths convinced every mass tragedy is a cover-up for some grand liberal agenda. He didn’t leak those pages to serve justice. He leaked them to get validation from a community of online bigots. It wasn’t about the truth. It was about clout, in my opinion.

Davidson may have been Internal Affairs on paper. But in practice, he seems like he was serving a very different agenda.

(Sources)