President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday that declassifies the FBI files related to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination. The order also declassified the files on former President John F. Kennedy and former U.S. Senator and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.
“That’s a big one, huh?” said Trump just before signing the order inside the Oval Office. “I know people have been waiting on this … for decades.” As he signed it, Trump vowed, “Everything will be revealed.”
In his order, President Trump declared that the King and Kennedy families and the American public “deserve transparency and truth.”
“It is in the national interest to finally release all records related to these assassinations without delay,” the order says.
The president acknowledged that while Congress has not directed the release of information pertaining to the assassinations of RFK and Dr. King, “I have determined that the release of all records in the Federal Government’s possession pertaining to each of those assassinations is also in the public interest.”
Despite Thursday’s signing, the FBI files on MLK won’t be immediately released. The order calls for the director of the National Intelligence and U.S. attorney general to coordinate with the assistant to the president for National Security Affairs and the president’s counsel within 45 days to “present a plan to the president for the full and complete release of records relating” to the assassinations of RFK and King and “present a plan to the President for the full and complete release of these records.” For President Kennedy’s files, the order calls for the same steps to be made within 15 days.
The decision to declassify FBI files on the 1960s assassinations of the Kennedys and King is major, as much of it has been redacted from public view.
King was assassinated in 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee, while on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, marking a dark moment in U.S. history following the assassination of President Kennedy, who worked with King to advance civil rights for Black Americans. Just two months after Dr. King’s assassination, Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles while campaigning for president. Within that same decade, Malcolm X was also assassinated in 1965.
King’s FBI files are of particular interest given the federal government’s illegal surveillance of King and other civil rights activists as part of a decades-long operation known as COINTELPRO led by former Attorney General J. Edgar Hoover. That history has led to conspiracy theories about the role of the government in King’s assassination. A special congressional committee in 1979 concluded, “No federal, state or local government agency was involved in the assassination of Dr King.”