Trump orders declassification of all documents related to John F. Kennedy assassination

Donald Trump issued an executive order on Thursday authorizing the declassification of all documents related to the assassinations of former President John F. Kennedy, his brother, former Senator Robert F. Kennedy, as well as the pastor and activist for black rights Martin Luther King, some 60 years after these tragic events.

After issuing dozens of executive orders earlier this week, including on immigration and energy resources, the 47th president of the United States took out his black pen for an issue that will not have as great an impact on politics American, but which is likely to arouse passions.

Many people have been waiting for this for years, for decadeshe noted while signing the document in the Oval Office, on the fourth day of his mandate.

All will be revealedsaid Donald Trump in front of the cameras, while many Americans continue to doubt in particular the official thesis on the assassination of the former Democratic president, nicknamed JFKkilled on November 22, 1963 when he was only 46 years old.

Continuing to redact and withhold information from records relating to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy is not in the public interest and […] the publication of these documents has been delayed for too longaffirms Donald Trump in his decree, published on the White House website.

Their families and the American people deserve transparency and the truth. It is in the national interest to finally make public all documents related to these assassinations without delay.

John F. Kennedy was shot while driving near a cheering crowd in Dallas, Texas. The official commission of inquiry into the assassination concluded in 1964 that Lee Harvey Oswald, a former Marine commando who had lived in the Soviet Union, had acted alone, but the Democratic president’s death fueled the most enduring conspiracy theories.

No trial could take place because Lee Harvey Oswald was shot by another individual shortly after his arrest.

Robert Kennedy Jr., Donald Trump’s candidate appointed to head the Department of Health, has himself already spoken about overwhelming evidence of the involvement of CIA in the assassination of his uncle and clues very convincing though circumstantial of the involvement of the American intelligence agency in that of his father.

Give that to RFK Jrsaid President Trump, handing one of his colleagues the black pen with which he signed the decree.

The executive action grants the Director of National Intelligence and the Justice Department 15 days to present, in coordination with some of its advisors, a plan on the full release of documents related to John F. Kennedy and 45 days for records related to Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King.

A 1992 JFK-related records law

Several documents devoted to what remains one of the most significant events in American political history, sometimes redacted, have already been made public.

A 1992 law called for the release of documents related to JFK by October 2017, unless the president determined that doing so would harm issues such as military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement or foreign relations.

Donald Trump had already made 2,800 documents public in 2017, but blocked the disclosure of several others, at the time of the deadline established by law.

By 2022, the Biden administration had subsequently released more than 13,000 documents from the case, including documents related to the killer’s trip to Mexico weeks earlier, but they revealed little new information about the shooting.

The White House, however, blocked the release of thousands of other documents, citing concerns about national security.

At the time, the National Archives said that 97% of the documents in its possession, the equivalent of 5 million pages, were now made public, according to the New York Times.

Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, killed in 1968

The disclosure of information related to the other two assassinations is not subject to any law.

Former United States Attorney General and New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy suffered the same fate as his brother on June 6, 1968. A candidate for the Democratic nomination, he was shot dead after a primary in California while he had just finished a speech at the Ambassador Hotel.

Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian immigrant to the United States, is serving a life sentence for the crime, but the death of the politician who could have been elected to the White House has also given rise to speculation.

Martin Luther King was assassinated on April 4, 1968 by a white segregationist, James Earl Ray, on the balcony of a motel in Memphis, Tennessee.

His children, however, have in the past expressed doubts about the guilt of Ray, who died in prison in 1998.

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With information from Agence France-Presse and New York Times