Why is Trump releasing final files on JFK, RFL, MLK assassinations? , Donald Trump News
United States President Donald Trump on Thursday issued an executive order declaring that former US President John F. Kennedy (JFK), his younger brother, Senator Robert F. Kennedy (RFK) and civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Documents related to the murders of Jr. (MLK) is to be declassified.
According to the National Archives and Records Administration, 99 percent of the records regarding JFK’s death have already been released, with less than 4,700 documents remaining.
Here’s what we know:
What does Trump’s declassification order say?
The executive order Thursday says that within 15 days, the Director of National Intelligence and the Attorney General must coordinate with other government officials to release a “full and complete” set of records regarding JFK’s death. To jointly present Trump with the plan.
It adds that within 45 days the same group of government officials will review records related to the assassinations of RFK and MLK and present Trump with a plan for their “full and complete release.”
The order said the family and the American public “deserve transparency and truth”.
“It is in the national interest to finally release all records related to these murders without delay.”
How were JFK, RFK and MLK assassinated?
John F Kennedy
Democrat JFK was president from January 1961 until November 22, 1963, when he was shot and killed while riding his motorcade through Dallas, Texas.
He was accompanied by his wife, Jacqueline Kennedy, Texas Governor John Connally and his wife, Nellie Connally. Governor Connally was also injured in the attack.
JFK was 46 years old at the time of his death. His vice president, Lyndon B. Johnson, ordered an investigation by a commission led by Chief Justice Earl Warren.
The Warren Commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald, a former Marine-turned-Communist activist, was responsible for killing JFK. He said Oswald, 24, was working alone at the time. Oswald was shot and killed while he was being transported from police headquarters to the county jail by Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby two days after JFK’s death.
robert f kennedy
JFK’s brother and a Democratic New York senator, RFK, was shot nearly five years later in Los Angeles on June 5, 1968.
He announced his candidacy for the presidential election in 1968. After winning the California Democratic presidential primary, he was meeting with supporters at the Ambassador Hotel.
This is where a then-24-year-old Palestinian Jordanian, Sirhan Sirhan, shot JFK, who was taken to Good Samaritan Hospital, where he succumbed to his wounds. Sirhan, 80, is serving a life sentence at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego County, California.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
MLK, prominent civil rights activist and political philosopher, was shot and killed as he stood on the balcony of his second-floor room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968. He was 39 years old at that time. Death.
MLK was taken to St. Joseph’s Hospital, where he died from his injuries.
In 1969, James Earl Ray, a 40-year-old segregationist fugitive since his 1967 escape from a Missouri prison, where he was part way through a 20-year sentence for a robbery in the 1950s, confessed to killing MLK. . He was captured by Scotland Yard investigators in London. According to the National Archives, the FBI concluded that Ray was a “racially motivated murderer”.
Ray was sentenced by the Shelby County Criminal Court to 99 years at Brush Mountain Penitentiary in Petros, Tennessee, and died 29 years into his sentence from health complications in 1998.
How many documents about the murders have already been released?
The US Congress passed a law in 1992 mandating that files related to the JFK assassination be released within 25 years.
Since passage of this law, approximately 320,000 documents have been reviewed, 99 percent of which have been released, according to the National Archives and Records Administration.
All documents should have been released in 2017, during Trump’s first term. Trump released about 2,800 more documents but, under pressure from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), withheld hundreds of others.
In 2023, President Joe Biden released approximately 17,000 more documents, leaving 4,684 documents still partially or completely related to JFK’s death.
What conspiracy theories have emerged about the murders?
All three assassinations, especially that of JFK, are shrouded in mystery because the CIA and FBI have classified many documents, preventing conspiracy theories.
The American public, government officials, and even some family members of deceased leaders have doubted the ultimate conclusions of the investigations into these deaths. Some believe that the accused killers were not acting alone, and that important details about the murders have been withheld.
“I’m just a patsy!” Oswald said in a video recorded after his arrest for the JFK assassination at Dallas police headquarters. Many read this as Oswald saying that he was a scapegoat, and did not act alone.
The Warren Commission concluded that a single 6.5-millimeter bullet killed both JFK and wounded Governor Connally. Many people doubt this discovery and it is understood that a bullet went through the bodies of two adult men. Critics also doubted the trajectory of the bullet.
The footage of the assassination, filmed by clothing manufacturer Abraham Zapruder, shows a gruesome frame of JFK’s head, exposed to a second shot, as was his skull. For years, this segment of the film was not released to the public until ABC News broadcast it in 1975.
The fact that Oswald was executed shortly after being arrested, and therefore no trial took place, has also fueled conspiracy theories.
Trump’s health secretary pick and RFK’s son Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in 2023 that there was “overwhelming” evidence that the CIA was involved in the assassination of his uncle, JFK.
He also said there was “very solid” but “circumstantial” evidence that the CIA was involved in his father’s murder.
After visiting Sirhan in prison, Kennedy Jr. said, “I was troubled that the wrong person might be convicted of my father’s murder. My father was the chief law enforcement officer in this country. I think if someone was put in jail for a crime, he would be upset,” The Washington Post quoted him as saying in 2018.
MLK’s family does not believe that Ray killed him, and have stated that they believe his assassination was the result of a conspiracy by the FBI. Ray also did not stand trial because he pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty.
Bernice King, the youngest of MLK’s four children, said, “It hurts my heart that James Earl Ray had to spend his life in prison, which he did not have.”
MLK’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit in 1999 titled “King Family v. Javers and Other Unknown Co-conspirators”. Loyd Javers owned a restaurant close to the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis. In 1993, Javers told ABC News that he had been paid $100,000 by alleged Memphis mobster Frank Liberto to arrange for the assassination of MLK.
A Memphis jury ruled that Javers and “conspirators” including “government agencies” were responsible for the murder. The family said they were satisfied with the decision. MLK’s son, Dexter, said after the verdict, “After today, we don’t want questions like, ‘Do you believe James Earl Ray killed your father?’ I’ve been hearing that all my life. No, I don’t, and that’s the end of it. ,
