Why is Trump releasing the last files on JFK, RFL, MLK assassinations?

On Thursday, US President Donald Trump announced that documents relating to the murders of former US President John F. Kennedy (JFK), his younger brother, Senator Robert F. Kennedy (RFK), and Martin Luther King, Jr., an activist for civil rights, will be declassified.

According to the National Archives and Records Administration, 99 percent of records about JFK’s death have already been released, with fewer than 4, 700 documents remaining.

Here is what we know:

What does Trump’s declassification order say?

According to the executive order on Thursday, the attorney general and the national intelligence director should work with other government officials to prepare a plan to release “the full and complete” set of records about JFK’s death together within 15 days.

The same group of government officials will review the assassinations of RFK and MLK in 45 days, and they will provide Trump with a plan for their “full and complete release.”

According to the order, “the US public and its families deserve truth and transparency.”

“Eventually releasing all information related to these assassinations without delay is in the national interest.”

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 dead while riding his motorcade through Dallas, Texas.

Accompanying him were his wife, Jacqueline Kennedy, Texas Governor John Connally and his wife, Nelly Connally. Connally, the governor, was also hurt in the attack.

JFK was 46 at the time of his death. His vice president, Lyndon B Johnson, took over and 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. They held that Oswald, 24 at the time, was acting alone. Two days after JFK’s passing, Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby shot and killed Oswald as he was being taken from police headquarters to county jail.

Robert F Kennedy

JFK’s brother and Democratic New York Senator, RFK was shot dead nearly five years later on June 5, 1968, in Los Angeles.

In 1968, he had made his campaign announcement. He met with supporters at the Ambassador Hotel after winning a Democratic primary in California.

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, now 80, is serving a life sentence at Richard J Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego County, California.

Martin Luther King, Jr

MLK, the leading civil rights activist and political philosopher, was shot and killed while he was standing on the balcony of his second-floor room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968. He was 39 at the time of his death.

MLK was taken to St Joseph Hospital, where he died from his injury.

In 1969, James Earl Ray, a 40-year-old segregationist fugitive since his escape from a Missouri prison in 1967 where he was part-way through a 20-year sentence for a robbery in the 1950s, confessed to killing MLK. He had been apprehended in London by Scotland Yard detectives. According to the National Archives, the FBI concluded that Ray was a “racially motivated assassin”.

Shelby County Criminal Court sentenced Ray to 99 years in Petros, Tennessee, and he passed away 29 years later due to health issues.

How many assassination documents have already been made public?

In 1992, the US Congress mandated that the JFK assassination’s files be made public within 25 years.

Since the passage of this law, roughly 320, 000 documents have been reviewed, 99 percent of which have been released, according to the National Archives and Records Administration.

During Trump’s first term, the deadline to release all the documents was in 2017. Under pressure from the CIA and the FBI, Trump released approximately 2,800 more documents, but withheld hundreds of others that were pending review.

In 2023, President Joe Biden released about 17, 000 more documents, leaving 4, 684 documents still partially or fully withheld concerning JFK’s death.

What conspiracy theories have emerged about the assassinations?

The three assassinations, especially that of JFK have been shrouded in mystery because the CIA and FBI have kept several documents classified, stoking conspiracy theories.

The final findings of the investigations into these deaths have been questioned by the American public, government officials, and even some of the late leaders” families. Some people think the accused murderers were acting alone, and some people believe there are unreported facts about the killings.

“I’m just a patsy”! Oswald stated in a video released shortly after his arrest for the Dallas police’s HQ killing JFK that. Many read this as Oswald himself saying he was a scapegoat, and had not acted alone.

The Warren Commission determined that Governor Connally was seriously hurt and JFK was seriously injured by a single 6.5% bullet. Many people question this finding and consider it to be improbable that two adult men’s bodies were struck by a bullet. Additionally, critics doubt the bullet’s trajectory.

A grisly frame of JFK’s head burst open as a second shot hits his skull, according to footage from the assassination that was captured on film by clothing brand Abraham Zapruder. This scene from the 1975 movie was not made available to the public until ABC News broadcast it in 1975.

Conspiracy theories have also been fueled by the fact that Oswald was killed shortly after being arrested and that there was no trial.

Robert F Kennedy Jr, Trump’s health secretary pick and son of RFK, said in 2023 that there was “overwhelming” evidence that the CIA was involved in the killing of his uncle, JFK.

He said that there was also “very convincing” but “circumstantial” evidence that the CIA was involved in the killing of his father.

Kennedy Jr. expressed concern that the wrong person might have been sentenced to death for killing my father after meeting Sirhan in prison. In this country, my father served as the chief law enforcement officer. If someone had been imprisoned for a crime they didn’t commit, “I believe it would have disturbed him,” he said in a statement released by The Washington Post in 2018.

The family of MLK has claimed that Ray’s murder was the result of an FBI plot. Ray also avoided the death penalty by entering a guilty plea.

Bernice King, the youngest of MLK’s four children, told The Washington Post in 2018: “It pains my heart that James Earl Ray had to spend his life in prison paying for things he didn’t do.

MLK’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit titled “King family v Jowers and other unknown co-conspirators” in 1999. A restaurant was close to the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis that was owned by Lyd Jowers. In 1993, Jowers told ABC News that he had been paid $100, 000 by the alleged Memphis mobster Frank Liberto to arrange MLK’s assassination.

A Memphis jury ruled that Jowers and “conspirators” including “government agencies” were responsible for the killing. The family expressed satisfaction 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? ‘ That is something I’ve heard all my life. No, I don’t, and this is the end of it”.

Source: Aljazeera