Trump says he will quickly release files on assassinations of JFK, Robert Kennedy and MLK Reuters
Author: Gram Slattery
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President-elect Donald Trump said on Sunday he would release classified documents in the coming days relating to the assassinations of US President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
Trump, who returns to the White House on Monday, promised during the campaign to release classified intelligence and law enforcement files on the 1963 assassination of JFK, as the 35th US president is widely known.
He made similar promises during his 2017-2021 term, and actually released some documents related to the 1963 assassination of JFK. But he eventually caved to pressure from the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation and kept a significant portion of the documents secret, citing national security concerns.
“In the coming days, we will be releasing the remaining records related to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert Kennedy, as well as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other topics of great public interest,” Trump said at a rally in downtown Washington on before taking office for a second, non-consecutive term.
Trump did not specify which documents would be released and did not promise blanket declassification. King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated in 1968.
The assassination of JFK in particular is a source of enduring fascination in the United States. The assassination was attributed to a single gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, and the Justice Department and other federal government bodies reaffirmed that conclusion in the decades that followed. But polls show many Americans believe his death was the result of a wider conspiracy.
Trump’s new Health and Human Services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Robert Kennedy’s son and JFK’s nephew, said he believed the CIA was involved in his uncle’s death, a claim the agency described as baseless.
Kennedy Jr. he also said he believed his father was killed by multiple gunmen, a claim that contradicted official accounts.
