MLK’s family responds over release of assassination records
ALTANTA, Ga. - The King family has released a statement after President Donald Trump signed an executive order declassifying records related to the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
The order directs the director of national intelligence and the attorney general to develop a plan to release the records within 45 days. The order comes alongside similar orders for records related to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.
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In a statement, the King family said they hoped to “review the files as a family prior to its public release.”
“Today, our family has learned that President Trump has ordered the declassification of the remaining records pertaining to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert F. Kennedy, and our father, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,” the family said in a statement. “For us, the assassination of our father is a deeply personal family loss that we have endured over the last 56 years. We hope to be provided the opportunity to review the files as a family prior to its public release.”
There is currently no set date for the release of the documents.
King was outside a motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968, when he was assassinated. The civil rights leader, who had been in town to striking sanitation workers, was set to lead marches and other nonviolent protests there.
James Earl Ray pleaded guilty to assassinating King, though he later renounced that plea and maintained his innocence up until his death.
FBI documents released over the years show how the bureau wiretapped King’s telephone lines, bugged his hotel rooms and used informants to get information against him.
The executive order Trump signed Thursday also aims to declassify the remaining federal records relating to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.
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Trump had promised during his reelection campaign to make public the last batches of still-classified documents surrounding President Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas, which has transfixed people for decades. Trump made a similar pledge during his first term, but ultimately bent to appeals from the CIA and FBI to withhold some documents.
Trump has nominated Kennedy’s nephew, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to be the health secretary in his new istration. Kennedy’s father, Robert F. Kennedy, was assassinated in 1968 as he sought the Democratic presidential nomination. The younger Kennedy has said he isn’t convinced that a lone gunman was solely responsible for the assassination of his uncle, President Kennedy, in 1963.
The order directs the director of national intelligence and the attorney general to develop a plan within 15 days to release the remaining John F. Kennedy records, and within 45 days for the other two cases. It was not clear when the records would actually be released.
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