Donald Trump signed an executive order today to release more records related to the assassination of John F. Kennedy, as well as those related to the killings of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.
The JFK assassination has long been the subject of conspiracy theories, with long calls for the government to release remaining records that are still classified.
The executive order gives the director of national intelligence and the attorney general, in coordination with the assistant to the president for national security affairs and the counsel to the president, 15 days to present a plan for the full release of the records. They will have 45 days to present a plan for the release of the Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. records.
“I have now determined that the continued redaction and withholding of information from records pertaining to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy is not consistent with the public interest and the release of these records is long overdue,” Trump said in the executive order. “And although no Act of Congress directs the release of information pertaining to the assassinations of Senator Robert F. Kennedy and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 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.”
The JFK records were required by law to be released by 2017, but Trump accepted redactions for national security reasons. More records were released during Joe Biden’s presidency, but there are still a trove a remaining records that are still classified. Larry Sabato, a Kennedy scholar and director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, told the AP that he estimated that about 3,000 records have not been released.
Robert Kennedy Jr., Trump’s nominee to serve as secretary of Health and Human Services, has long called for the release of the records. He has advanced the claim that the CIA was involved in his uncle’s assassination.
John F. Kennedy’s grandson, Jack Schlossberg, posted a message on social media, “JFK conspiracy theories — The truth is a lot sadder than the myth — a tragedy that didn’t need to happen. Not part of an inevitable grand scheme.”
He added, “Declassification is using JFK as a political prop, when he’s not here to punch back. There’s nothing heroic about it.”
The Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 required that the records be publicly disclosed within 25 years, unless there were continued concerns over national defense, law enforcement or foreign policy harms that outweighed public disclosure. The law passed in part because of concerns that Oliver Stone’s JFK cast suspicions over the secrecy of previous investigations.
