President Trump to Release Unredacted JFK Assassination Files
President Donald Trump announced on Monday that his administration will release the government’s classified files pertaining to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy on Tuesday. This will be the first time about 80,000 pages of unredacted records will be made available to the public, an event that, according to Trump, “people have been waiting for decades.”
The announcement was made during the President’s visit to the John F. Kennedy Center of the Performing Arts, where he currently serves as board chairman. “We have a tremendous amount of paper. You’ve got a lot of reading. I don’t believe we’re going to redact anything,” President Trump said.
The decision to release these files aligns with Trump’s day one executive order signed back in January. The order aimed at fully releasing government documents related to the assassinations of not only Kennedy, but also his brother and presidential candidate Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, D-N.Y., and civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.
John F. Kennedy’s assassination on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, has been the subject of numerous conspiracy theories, especially after the identified assassin, Marine veteran Lee Harvey Oswald, was shot and killed days later. While many government records related to the Kennedy assassination have been released previously, certain information remained classified and redacted.
President Trump stated that he has directed his director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, to oversee the release of the remaining files. This decision comes in the wake of a 1992 federal law that required the Kennedy assassination records to be fully disclosed by October 26, 2017. However, the release could be withheld if the then-president determined that it would cause “identifiable harm” to military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or foreign relations such that it “outweighs the public interest in disclosure.”
As President during the 2017 deadline, Trump ordered the release of nearly 2,900 records but kept others secret due to concerns by the CIA and FBI that their release could harm national security. Former President Joe Biden also acted in 2021, 2022 and 2023 to allow agencies additional time to review the records.
The documents released in 2017 included details about the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Central Intelligence Agency’s investigations into Oswald and information on covert Cold War operations. The FBI, in February, revealed that they discovered an additional 2,400 new records related to the Kennedy assassination.
Speaking about the impending release, Trump said, “It’s going to be very interesting. It’s a lot of stuff, and you’ll make your own determination.” The release of unredacted JFK assassination files is undoubtedly a significant event anticipated by many, promising new insights into one of America’s most infamous historical moments.