Trump Orders Declassification of JFK, RFK, and MLK Assassination Files

Donald Trump has ordered the release of thousands of classified government documents related to the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy, which has fed conspiracy theories for decades.

The president's executive order, signed on Thursday, also seeks to declassify the remaining federal papers connected to the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The order is one of several executive moves Trump has issued in the first week of his second administration.

"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 those events," according to an executive order.

"Their families and the American people deserve clarity and honesty. It is in the national interest to immediately divulge all records about these assassinations," it continued.

Speaking to reporters, Trump stated, "Everything will be revealed."

"That's a big one," he explained as he signed the order.

Trump vowed throughout his re-election campaign to make public the last batches of classified records regarding Kennedy's assassination in Dallas, which had captivated people for decades. During his first administration, he made a similar vow but eventually gave in to the CIA and FBI's requests to retain some information.

Trump has selected Robert F Kennedy Jr., Kennedy's nephew, as the future administration's health secretary. Kennedy, whose father, Robert F Kennedy, was slain in Los Angeles in 1968 while running for president, has stated that he does not believe a single gunman was entirely responsible for his uncle's death in 1963.

The order orders the director of national intelligence and the attorney general to design a plan to declassify the remaining John F. Kennedy records within 15 days and the other two cases within 45. It was unclear when the records would be published.

Trump handed an assistant the pen used to sign the order, instructing him to present it to Robert F Kennedy Jr.

Kennedy Jr. told NBC News that he was "grateful to President Trump", adding, "I think it's a great move because they need more transparency in our government, and he's keeping his promise to have the government tell the truth to the American people about everything."

Meanwhile, Kennedy's grandson, Jack Schlossberg, criticized Trump's latest executive order as a "political prop".

"The fact is even more tragic than the myth; it was a preventable catastrophe. Not part of a predetermined larger plan. Declassification uses JFK as a political prop while he isn't present to respond. "There's nothing heroic about it," Schlossberg explained on X.

Only a few thousand of the millions of official data relating to John F. Kennedy's assassination have yet to be fully released. While those who have analyzed what has been disclosed thus far believe the public should not expect any earth-shattering revelations, there is still a strong interest in specifics about the assassination and the events surrounding it.

"There's always the possibility that something would slip through, which would be the tiny tip of a much larger iceberg that would be revealing," said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics and author of The Kennedy Half-Century. "That is what researchers look for." You're unlikely to find it now, but it's possible."

Kennedy was assassinated in downtown Dallas on November 22, 1963, when his motorcade passed in front of the Texas School Book Depository building, where Lee Harvey Oswald, 24, had set up a sniper's nest on the sixth floor. Two days after Kennedy was assassinated, nightclub owner Jack Ruby shot and killed Oswald during a jail transfer.

In the early 1990s, the federal government ordered that all assassination-related materials be kept in a single collection at the National Archives and Records Administration. The collection of more than 5 million records had to be opened by 2017 unless the president granted an exemption.

During his first administration, Trump boasted that he would release all remaining data on the president's assassination, but he ultimately withheld some due to concerns about national security. While data have continued to be published under Joe Biden, some remain unseen.

Sabato, who trains student researchers to sift through the data, says most researchers think that "roughly" 3,000 records have yet to be published, in whole or in part, with many of them coming from the CIA.

The records revealed over the last few years provide insight into how intelligence services operated at the time, including CIA cables and memoranda outlining Oswald's contacts to the Soviet and Cuban embassies during a trip to Mexico City just weeks before the assassination. The former marine deserted to the Soviet Union before returning to Texas.

However, experts believe that several documents in the collection are outside the president's power to release them. The disclosure obligation for 2017 did not apply to around 500 documents, including tax returns. Researchers also remark that records have been destroyed throughout the decades.