Trump directs the JFK and MLK assassination files to be released.

 

The declassification of documents pertaining to three of the most significant assassinations in US history—the murders of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr.—has been mandated by US President Donald Trump.

 

Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday, "A lot of people have been waiting for this for a long time, for years, for decades." "And everything is going to be exposed."

Top administration officials are required by the order to submit a plan within 15 days for declassifying the documents. However, that does not guarantee that it will occur.

 

In 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. Two months after King, America's most well-known civil rights leader, was killed in Memphis, Tennessee, his brother Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1968 while he was running for president in California.

 

In the years since, many of the documents pertaining to the investigations have been made public, but thousands of them—especially those pertaining to the extensive JFK investigation—remain redacted.

Lee Harvey Oswald, a Marine veteran who had defected to the Soviet Union and then returned to the United States, shot President John F. Kennedy.

 

According to a government commission, Oswald acted alone. Unresolved issues, however, have plagued the case for a long time and spawned more bizarre conspiracy theories as well as alternative theories regarding the involvement of the mafia, government agents, and other evil figures.

 

Decades of polling have shown that the majority of Americans do not think Oswald was the only assassin.

A law requiring the release of all investigation-related documents within 25 years was passed by Congress in 1992. Thousands of JFK-related documents, out of millions, are still partially or completely secret, despite the fact that both President Joe Biden and President Trump released mountains of them during their first terms.

During his first term, Trump pledged to declassify all of the files, but he backed off after being convinced to keep some files secret by FBI and CIA officials. Continued secrecy "is not consistent with the public interest," according to today's executive order.

 

"It's fantastic that the president has written down his pledge as a declaration of intent. Jefferson Morley, a former Washington Post journalist, JFK assassination expert, and editor of the online newsletter JFK Facts, stated that this is significant. However, implementation and specifics are crucial. We are only at the start of this process. It's unclear exactly how this will be implemented," he stated.

 

 

New information regarding the circumstances surrounding the assassination, including the CIA's extensive surveillance of Oswald, has been made public by recent document releases.

Paul Landis, a former Secret Service agent who was 88 at the time of the assassination and saw it up close, claimed in 2023 that he took a bullet from the car after Kennedy was shot.

 

 

According to experts, the information casts doubt on the official account that the president and Texas Governor John Connally, who was in the motorcade and survived the shooting, were both struck by a single bullet.

A complete release of all the redacted documents could greatly increase public knowledge, according to Mr. Morley, who also stated that new information has further questioned the idea that Oswald acted alone.

 

However, he cautioned that there might not be a "smoking gun" and that the CIA and other security specialists will work to keep things somewhat secret. His words, "This story is not over,"

Trump requested that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the president's nominee for health secretary and the son of RFK and JFK, receive the pen he used to sign the order during Thursday's signing ceremony at the White House.

For a long time, RFK Jr. has questioned the official accounts of both his father, Robert F. Kennedy, and his uncle's murder.

 

A Palestinian man named Sirhan Sirhan killed Kennedy Sr. in a ballroom in Los Angeles because he was upset about US backing for Israel. Other Kennedy family members dispute that assertion, but RFK Jr. told Sirhan in prison that he does not think Sirhan killed his father.

  

James Earl Ray, a white nationalist, shot and killed Martin Luther King Jr. Ray was allegedly a part of a wider conspiracy and did not act alone, according to King family members.