Trump administration releases MLK assassination files despite family’s concerns
The Trump administration released hundreds of thousands of pages of records on Monday related to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., moving forward despite objections from the civil rights leader’s family.
“The American people have waited nearly sixty years to see the full scope of the federal government’s investigation into Dr. King’s assassination,” said Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard in a statement.
“We are ensuring that no stone is left unturned in our mission to deliver complete transparency on this pivotal and tragic event in our nation’s history,” she added.
Gabbard confirmed that over 230,000 pages were being published with “minimal redactions for privacy reasons.”
President Donald Trump signed an executive order after taking office to declassify files related to the 1960s assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr.
Earlier this year, the National Archives released records from JFK’s November 1963 assassination in March and files related to Robert F. Kennedy’s June 1968 murder in April.
King was killed in April 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee. James Earl Ray was convicted of the murder and died in prison in 1998, but King’s children have long voiced doubts that he was the true assassin.
In a statement on Monday, King’s surviving children—Martin Luther King III and Bernice King—expressed support for transparency but warned that the release could be misused.
“We support transparency and historical accountability,” they said, “but we are concerned these records could be used for attacks on our father’s legacy.”
They pointed to the FBI’s surveillance and disinformation campaign against their father, calling it “invasive, predatory, and deeply disturbing.” That campaign, they said, was orchestrated by then FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and aimed to “discredit, dismantle and destroy Dr. King’s reputation and the broader American Civil Rights Movement.”
“These actions were not only invasions of privacy, but intentional assaults on the truth,” the statement continued.
“We ask those who engage with the release of these files to do so with empathy, restraint, and respect for our family’s continuing grief.”
In related historical context, the Warren Commission concluded that President John F. Kennedy’s assassination was carried out by a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald. Despite that, conspiracy theories have persisted, fueled in part by the slow release of government files.
Robert F. Kennedy, JFK’s younger brother and a former U.S. attorney general, was assassinated in June 1968 while campaigning for president. Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian-born Jordanian, was convicted of the murder and remains in prison in California.
