Trump Declassifies JFK, RFK, King Assassination Files

President Donald Trump signed a announcement at the White House on Thursday to declassify government records related to the assassinations of President John KennedyLate. Robert F. Kennedy and that Pastor Martin Luther King Jr.

Trump’s order could put an end to some lingering questions surrounding the assassinations, which all took place more than half a century ago.

The official conclusions that all three killings were carried out by lone gunmen have been challenged by a number of conspiracy theories. The fact that some records of the investigations into the murders have remained secret for so long played a role in fueling these theories.

“It’s a big one,” Trump said in the Oval Office as he signed the executive order.

“A lot of people have been waiting for this for a long, long time, for years, for decades, and everything will be revealed,” Trump said.

The order requires the Director of National Intelligence and the Attorney General to coordinate with the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and Trump’s legal counsel and present a plan to the President “for the full and complete release of records relating to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.” “

It also requires the same people to review the records related to the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and King and present Trump with a plan for their “full and complete release.”

The executive order states: “More than 50 years after the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the federal government has not released to the public all of its records related to these events .”

“Their families and the American people deserve transparency and truth. It is in the national interest to finally release all records related to these assassinations without delay,” the order said.

The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 required that all records related to that assassination “be released in their entirety by October 26, 2017, unless the President certifies that: (i) continued release is necessary because of a identifiable harm to military defense, intelligence operations, or the conduct of foreign relations, and (ii) the identifiable harm is of such severity that it outweighs the public interest in disclosure.”

During his first term in the White House, in 2017 and 2018, Trump had authorized deferrals of full disclosures, as had his successor, former President Joe Biden. On Wednesday night, Trump said in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity that he had been told by then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is a former CIA director, not to declassify remaining records on President Kennedy’s assassination.

Trump said in Thursday’s order: “I have now determined that the continued redaction and withholding of information from records relating to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy is not in the public interest, and the release of those records is long overdue.” “

“And although no law of Congress mandates the release of information relating to the assassinations of Senator Robert F. Kennedy and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I have determined that the release of all records in the possession of the federal government relating to each of these assassinations are also in the public interest,” the order said.

President Kennedy was killed on November 22, 1963, after being shot while riding in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas.

The younger brother of the Democratic icon, Robert Kennedy, who represented New York in the US Senate, was shot dead on June 5, 1968 in the kitchen of a Los Angeles hotel after winning California’s Democratic presidential primary. He died the next day.

Trump has nominated the late senator’s son, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to be secretary of the US Health and Human Services Department.

Civil rights leader King was assassinated two months before RFK, on ​​April 4, 1968, when he was shot while standing on the balcony of a motel in Memphis, Tennessee.