Trump Orders Release of Classified JFK Assassination Files
The order also includes the release of documents relating to the deaths of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.
Anna Moneymaker/Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
President Donald Trump ordered the release of classified documents concerning the assassination of John F. Kennedy Thursday, after decades of conspiracy theories surrounding the president’s death.
He signed the executive order at the White House Thursday, which also includes the release of documents relating to the deaths of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.
“More than 50 years after the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Federal Government has not released to the public all of its records related to those events,” the executive order reads.
“Their families and the American people deserve transparency and truth. It is in the national interest to finally release all records related to these assassinations without delay.”
Millions of pages from documents about the JFK assassination have already been released, but there several thousand pages remained classified.
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Trump first made the promise to declassify the documents during his first term, but said he was talked out of it by his CIA director, Mike Pompeo.
“I felt he knew something that maybe, you know, when he asked you not to, you sort of say ‘why?’ and he felt that it was not a good time to release them,” Trump told Sean Hannity in an interview with Fox News Wednesday.
Trump’s director of national intelligence will have 15 days to put together a plan for the release of the JFK documents. The RFK and MLK documents will be compiled over a 45 day period.
Conspiracy theories have swirled for decades about the murders of these iconic political figures of the 60s. Americans have been particularly fascinated by the murder of JFK, with many suggesting gunman Lee Harvey Oswald didn’t act alone.
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