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President Donald Trump on Thursday said he’s ordering the declassification and release of all remaining records relating to the assassinations of President John F Kennedy, his brother and New York Senator Robert F Kennedy Sr, and the Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr.
Trump made the announcement during an impromptu signing ceremony in the Oval Office after being handed the order to sign by White House Staff Secretary Will Scharf.
After Scharf told him what he was signing, the president replied: “That’s a big one., huh?”
“A lot of people are waiting for this for a long time, for years, for decades,” he continued before adding that “everything will be revealed” about the assassinations, all three of which have been the subject of conspiracy theories in the decades since they occurred.
A George HW Bush-era law had required the release of all JFK assassination records in October 2017, and during Trump’s first term numerous records were indeed declassified and made public, but many remained hidden from view for years afterwards
Trump’s predecessor, former president Joe Biden, also signed a 2021 presidential memorandum laying out a series of deadlines for declassification releasing records related to the 35th president’s shooting by former US Marine Lee Harvey Oswald, and cited the Covid-19 pandemic’s effect on agencies’ declassification work and the need “to protect against identifiable harm to the military defence, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or the conduct of foreign relations that is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in immediate disclosure.”
At the time, members of the Kennedy family slammed Biden for delaying the release of the remaining records, including the late New York senator’s son, Robert F Kennedy Jr.
The younger Kennedy, who is the nephew of the late 35th president as well as Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, has often said that he does not believe that Oswald acted alone when he shot his uncle from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas, Texas.
He has also claimed that Sirhan Sirhan, the man who was convicted of assassinating his father the night after he won the 1968 California presidential primary, is innocent and should be released.
Trump’s order also covers records relating to the April 1968 killing of King, the civil rights leader and advocate of nonviolent protest who is now memorialized on the National Mall in Washington, DC.
A House of Representatives select committee concluded that King, who was shot by a sniper while standing on a hotel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee, was murdered by the man later convicted of the killing, James Earl Ray.
Like the assassinations of both Kennedy brothers, King’s death has long been the subject of conspiracy theories regarding government involvement.
Ray, who died in prison in 1998, repeatedly tried to recant the confession he gave police after his arrest in London four months after King’s death.
Some members of King’s family believe that Ray was innocent and have suggested that a Memphis Police Department officer, Lieutenant Earl Clark, was the actual shooter.
A 1999 lawsuit filed by the King family against Memphis restauranteur alleged to have played a role in King’s death resulted in a jury finding that there had been a conspiracy to kill the late civil rights leader.
In the order signed today, Trump said he’d found that “the continued redaction and withholding of information from records” relating to President Kennedy’s death was “not consistent with the public interest and the release of these records is long overdue.”
He also said that the release of “all records in the Federal Government’s possession” relating to the RFK Sr and King assassinations was “also in the public interest.”
Trump has ordered the Director of National Intelligence and the Attorney General to work with the White House Counsel and National Security Adviser on presenting him with a plan “for the full and complete release of records relating to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy within 15 days. He has also directed the DNI and AG to do the same regarding the RFK Jr and King records within 45 days.
