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Trump Orders Declassification of JFK, RFK, and MLK Assassination Files

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday to declassify files related to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“That’s a big one,” Trump remarked as he signed the order in the Oval Office, later handing the marker to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom he has nominated as Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Trump has long pledged to make these records public. In 2017, he released a trove of documents related to JFK’s 1963 assassination, though some files remained redacted at the recommendation of the CIA and FBI.

A 1992 law mandated the release of all JFK assassination records by 2017 unless the president determined that withholding them was in the national interest.

The new order states that Trump has concluded the continued withholding of JFK-related records is “not consistent with the public interest” and that their release is “long overdue.”

The directive also includes files on the assassinations of Senator Robert F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., despite no congressional mandate requiring their disclosure. “The release of all records in the Federal Government’s possession pertaining to each of those assassinations is also in the public interest,” the order notes.

However, the records will not be immediately available. Trump has given the Director of National Intelligence and the Attorney General 15 days to propose a plan for the full release of JFK documents and 45 days for plans covering RFK and MLK files.

This announcement follows the Biden administration’s release of over 13,000 JFK-related documents. According to the National Archives, more than 97% of the collection, containing over 5 million pages, is already publicly available. The CIA stated that 95% of its JFK-related records had been released, with no documents entirely redacted.

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