JFK assassination records to be fully released Tuesday, Trump announces

President Donald Trump has said that all of the files relating to the assassination of John F. Kennedy will be released on Tuesday.

Speaking at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., on Monday, Trump declared, “We are, tomorrow, announcing and giving all of the Kennedy files. People have been waiting for decades for this, and I have instructed my people that are responsible—put together by Tulsi Gabbard—that is going to be released tomorrow.”

“I don’t believe we are going to redact anything,” Trump said. “I said just don’t redact, we can’t redact.” He then mentioned that approximately 80,000 pages are expected to be released.

The announcement follows an executive order signed by Trump in January, directing the full release of all records related to the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr.

The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 required all records related to JFK’s assassination to be publicly disclosed by October 26, 2017. While the vast majority of documents have been released under both the Trump and Biden administrations, thousands of files remained partially or fully withheld as of 2023, according to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).

In his executive order, Trump said that continued redaction and withholding of JFK assassination records was “not consistent with the public interest” and that the release was “long overdue.” He extended that argument to the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., stating that their families and the American people “deserve transparency and truth.”