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GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy called on the Tennessee governor, FBI and Metropolitan Nashville Police Department to release the Covenant School shooter’s manifesto.
Ramaswamy delivered a speech outside Nashville City Hall on Wednesday, calling on Tennessee GOP Gov. Bill Lee to release the manifesto that transgender shooter Audrey Hale wrote prior to the mass shooting at the Presbyterian school on March 27.
Hale, 28, killed six people in the rampage: 9-year-olds Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs and William Kinney; Cynthia Peak, 61, Katherine Koonce, 60, and Mike Hill, 61.
NASHVILLE SCHOOL SHOOTING SHOULD BE INVESTIGATED AS HATE CRIME, HAWLEY SAYS
GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy called on the Tennessee governor and Nashville police to release the Covenant School shooter’s manifesto. (Rachel Mummey/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“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,” Ramaswamy said. “Release the manifesto. Speak the truth.”
“The hard times are the times where we must openly speak that truth,” Ramaswamy continued. “It is hardest to speak the truth under difficult circumstances, but that is when we require it the most.”
“I understand that there are legitimate concerns that we do not want details released that will motivate copycats, I don’t want that. The fellow Americans who earnestly have called for the release of this manifesto, they don’t want that either. And I want to go on record and say it would be perfectly reasonable for the police to redact any sections of this manifesto that lay out specific plans, that lay out specific premeditated plots on details of execution that could be copied by another individual.”
Ramaswamy also said that “what we do need to know is this killer’s motives” and Hale’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,” Ramaswamy added. “And we are going to have to deeply understand it if we are to address it.”
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (AP Photo/George Walker IV/File)
Ramaswamy’s comments come amid his push ahead for the White House in a crowded GOP field.
Hale’s violent rampage quickly sparked calls for the release of Hale’s manifesto, which Nashville police and the Tennessee government have yet to release.
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Neither Lee’s office, FBI nor Nashville police immediately responded to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
Houston Keene is a politics writer for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to Houston.Keene@Fox.com and on Twitter: @HoustonKeene
