Trump says he will release 80,000 pages of JFK files on Tuesday

The death of John F. Kennedy, whose murder has fueled conspiracy theories for more than 60 years, will be made public on Tuesday, according to Donald Trump, president of the United States.

Trump stated at the Kennedy Center on Monday that the release would “a lot of reading” about the assassination of the 35th US president, who died in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963.

“I don’t think we’ll redact anything,” he said. Trump told reporters, “You can’t redact, just don’t redact,” and I said that. However, the JFK files will be made available.

Trump responded by stating that he was aware of the contents of the files and had seen what was in them.

He declared, “It’s going to be very interesting.”

Following a January executive order, Trump’s remarks request the release of all documents relating to the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.

Trump gave Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, the order to “present a plan for the full and complete release” of JFK assassination files within 15 days.

About 2,400 new files related to the assassination were discovered according to the FBI last month as a result of searches it had conducted to comply with the order.

For decades, US society has been captivated by the circumstances surrounding JFK’s death, with surveys revealing that the majority of Americans doubt official theories.

According to a 2023 Gallup poll, 65% of Americans disapproved of the Warren Commission’s claim that Lee Harvey Oswald, a US Marine veteran who was detained over the death of JFK, was the sole suspect in the president’s death.

One in ten people surveyed said they thought Oswald had a plot to extort money from the US government, while one in ten said they thought he had a working relationship with the CIA.

Trump pledged to release all assassination-related documents during his first administration, but he only ultimately made about 2,800 releases after the CIA and FBI requested that thousands of pages of information be held pending review.

More than 4,700 files were withheld in part or full, leaving only about 17, 000 more records under the former US president’s control.

More than 99 percent of the roughly 320 000 documents reviewed by the 1992 JFK Records Act have been made public, according to the National Archives.

If the president decided that the release of any remaining files would “inflict such a significant harm” to national defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or foreign relations of such magnitude that it “outweighs the public interest in disclosure,” the law mandated that all remaining files be made public by October 26th, 2017.