A former police officer was charged last week with leaking the writings of the transgender-identifying woman who murdered three children and three adults at the Covenant School in March 2023.
But retired Lt. Garet Davidson — who was arrested and jailed on May 6 — says that he’s innocent. Davidson claims he’s being retaliated against for a complaint he filed against the department criticizing its Covenant investigation in May 2024, four months after he retired.
Davidson’s May 2024 complaint against the police department alleges numerous instances of misconduct by top police officials, including mismanagement of the Covenant investigation, a pattern of bias in disciplinary investigations, altering performance results for low-achieving recruits, avoiding accountability, and failure to follow sexual harassment policies.
Davidson’s legal team believes that the charges were brought in retaliation for his efforts to expose problems at the police department.
“The charges against retired MNPD Lieutenant Garet Davidson represent a transparent attempt to discredit and silence a whistleblower who exposed serious misconduct within the Metro Nashville Police Department,” Davidson’s legal team said. “We look forward to vigorously defending Mr. Davidson against these retaliatory charges.”
Davidson has been outspoken about the investigation into the Covenant shooting, telling conservative radio host Michael Patrick Leahy in June 2024 that the FBI sent a memo to police instructing them not to release any details of the attacker’s writings.
At the time, Davidson said that he had some concerns that there would be action taken against him based on the information he had shared about the FBI memo.
“I don’t put it beyond anybody,” he said. “Part of the reason why I left law enforcement was to avoid some aspects of retaliation, but that doesn’t guarantee anything.”
In the charges unveiled last week, Davidson is accused of being involved in the leak of the writings of the woman who entered the Covenant School, a Christian school in an affluent Nashville neighborhood, on March 27, 2023, and murdered six people before she was killed by police.
Following the attack, the police announced that the shooter had a “manifesto,” but refused to release it to the public. Despite that refusal, media outlets, including The Daily Wire, obtained portions and uncovered that the shooter wrote frequently of her desire to be a man and anger at her parents for resisting her so-called transition.
Prior to his arrest last week, Davidson had been linked to the police department’s investigation into the leak.
His home was raided by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation in November 2024 in relation to the investigation into the leak. He faces two indictments: one charges him with theft, two counts of burglary, and 30 counts of official misconduct; the other charges him with six counts of official misconduct related to the Covenant School shooting.
The raid came after he was named in a June 2024 court filing on the leak, though he was not directly named as a leaker. That came just weeks after he filed a misconduct complaint against the police department, which included criticism of the Covenant investigation.
A GoFundMe Davidson set up to help with his legal expenses has been shut down. A spokesman for the platform told The Daily Wire that the fundraiser was removed because of its policies not to raise money for “the legal defense of financial and violent crimes, including those related to money laundering, murder, robbery, assault, battery, sex crimes or crimes against minors.”
The spokesman did not further elaborate on why the fundraiser had been shut down.
Last month, the Nashville police department released its final investigative report into the shooting. The report, released over two years after the attack, downplayed the attacker’s hatred of Christianity and fixation on gender ideology and “white privilege.”
