By Gram Slattery
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President-elect Donald Trump said on Sunday he would release classified documents in the coming days related to the assassinations of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
Trump, who returns to the White House on Monday, promised on the campaign trail to release classified intelligence and law enforcement files on the 1963 assassination of JFK, as America’s 35th president is widely known.
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He had made a similar promise during his 2017 to 2021 term, and he did in fact release some documents related to JFK’s 1963 slaying. But he ultimately bowed to pressure from the Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation, and kept a significant chunk of documents under wraps, citing national security concerns.
“In the coming days, we are going to make public remaining records related to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert Kennedy, as well as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other topics of great public interest,” Trump said at a rally in downtown Washington, the day before he takes office for a second, non-consecutive term.
Trump did not specify which documents would be released, and he did not promise a blanket declassification. King and Robert Kennedy were both assassinated in 1968.
The JFK assassination, in particular, is a source of enduring fascination in the United States. The murder has been attributed to a sole gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, and the Justice Department and other federal government bodies have reaffirmed that conclusion in the intervening decades. But polls show many Americans believe his death was a result of a wider conspiracy.
Trump’s health and human services secretary-designate, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the son of Robert Kennedy and nephew of JFK, has said he believes the CIA was involved in his uncle’s death, an allegation the agency has described as baseless.
Kennedy Jr. has also said he believes his father was killed by multiple gunmen, an assertion that contradicts official accounts.
(Reporting by Gram Slattery, editing by Ross Colvin and Howard Goller)
