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President Donald Trump has signed an executive order directing the release of federal documents related to the assassinations of former President John F. Kennedy, former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
The order mandates the director of national intelligence and the attorney general to submit a plan within 15 days for the “full and complete release” of JFK assassination records.
“I have now determined that the continued redaction and withholding of information from records pertaining to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy is not consistent with the public interest, and the release of these records is long overdue,” the order states.
Although no law requires the release of records related to Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., Trump declared it is also in the public interest to declassify all relevant government records about their deaths.
During his 2024 campaign, Trump promised to release the remaining documents about JFK’s assassination, a topic that has fueled public interest for decades. He made a similar pledge during his first term but withheld some records due to intelligence concerns.
JFK was assassinated in 1963 in Dallas by Lee Harvey Oswald, though conspiracy theories about CIA involvement or additional shooters persist. In 2022, the National Archives released nearly 13,000 documents related to the assassination, the largest batch since 2018.
Legislation passed in 1992 required the release of all remaining records by October 2017, barring risks to national defense or intelligence, but both Trump and President Biden issued extensions to keep certain files classified.
Experts caution that the final batch of documents is unlikely to reveal significant new information.
Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis in April 1968, and Robert F. Kennedy was killed later that year by Sirhan Sirhan.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., son of the late senator, has supported Trump’s 2024 presidential bid and has been nominated by Trump to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. Kennedy Jr. has previously expressed belief in a conspiracy theory implicating the CIA in his uncle’s assassination.
