Trump orders release of JFK and MLK assassination documents

US President Donald Trump has ordered the declassification of documents related to the three biggest assassinations in American history – the assassinations of John F Kennedy, Robert F Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.

“A lot of people have been waiting for this for a long time, decades,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday. “All will be revealed.”

President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. His brother Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated while running for president in 1968, just two months after King, America’s most famous civil rights leader, was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.

Many documents related to the investigation have been released over the years, although thousands are still redacted, particularly those related to JFK.

Trump asked to give the pen used to sign the order to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., RFK’s son, JFK’s nephew and the president’s nominee for health secretary.

John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas by Lee Harvey Oswald. But alternative conspiracy theories about the involvement of government agents, the mafia and all sorts of other nefarious characters have long dogged the case.

RFK Jr. has long doubted the official narrative regarding his uncle’s assassination, as well as the assassination of his father, RFK.

Trump had promised to declassify all of the JFK files in his first term, but he reneged on his promise after CIA and FBI officials convinced him to keep some of the files secret. Today’s executive order states that continued secrecy is “not consistent with the public interest.”

A 1992 law required classified files to be released within 25 years. Trump did not meet the deadline, and neither did former President Joe Biden when he released more documents in 2022. A few thousand – out of millions – related to the murder have not yet been fully revealed.

The release of documents in recent years has revealed some new details, including the CIA’s surveillance of Oswald.