Nashville shooting: Garland says hate crime prosecution is premature since motive unknown
Kaelan Deese
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Republican lawmakers pressed Attorney General Merrick Garland on Tuesday whether the Justice Department will open a hate crime investigation one day after a mass shooter killed six people at a Christian private school.
“I realize that the shooter is dead, but the shooter could have had collaborators. Do you plan on opening a hate crime investigation for the targeting of Christians?” Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) asked Garland at a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing.
Garland noted that the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives had been on the scene working with local law enforcement and that “as of now, motive hasn’t been identified.”
“We are certainly working full-time with them to try and determine what the motive is, and, of course, motive is what determines whether it’s a hate crime or not,” the attorney general said.
The shooter, who was killed by law enforcement, was identified Monday by police as Audrey Hale, a 28-year-old biological woman who identified as a transgender man. Hale was a former student at the school and lived in the Nashville area.
Metropolitan Nashville Police Chief John Drake said during a Monday interview that he believed Hale held a sense of “resentment” toward the school.
“There’s some belief that there was some resentment for having to go to that school,” the police chief told NBC News.
Later during the hearing, Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN) picked up on Kennedy’s question, saying families afflicted by the attack “not only deserve the full resources of the Department of Justice to find out what happened but transparency about what happened and why.”
“You responded … that the motive is not yet known. But if the evidence suggests that the killer’s motives were political or ideological. I just want to confirm with you that part of your investigation will be to determine whether this constitutes a hate crime or domestic terrorism,” Hagerty said.
Garland replied by clarifying, “Yes,” adding that a “motive that is based on the religion or the political ideology of the victims is a hate crime.”
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Discussion over the motivation of Hale’s attack, which killed three children and three adults, comes as Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) sent a message to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and FBI Director Christopher Wray, calling for the agencies to investigate the attack as a hate crime.
“The full resources of the federal government must be brought to bear to determine how this crime occurred and who may have influenced the deranged shooter to carry out these horrific crimes,” the Missouri senator wrote.