President Donald Trump announced that he will release 80,000 pages of unredacted documents related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on Tuesday. This move fulfills a campaign promise he made to declassify the remaining government records on the case.
During a visit to the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Trump told reporters that the long-awaited files would be made public the following day. “People have been waiting for decades for this,” he said, adding that he had instructed his team, including Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, to ensure the full release.
Trump emphasized that there would be no redactions, telling officials, “You can’t redact.” He described the documents as “interesting” but noted that he had not personally reviewed them in detail. “I’m not doing summaries—you’ll write your own summary,” he told reporters.
Executive Order on Declassification
In January, Trump signed an executive order mandating the release of government documents related to the assassinations of JFK, former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr. The order required intelligence agencies and the attorney general to present a plan within 15 days for the full release of these records.
Trump’s decision comes after decades of public speculation about Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas in 1963 by Lee Harvey Oswald. Conspiracy theories have persisted, including suspicions of CIA involvement or the possibility of another shooter.
“I said during the campaign I’d do it, and I’m a man of my word,” Trump said Monday.
Previous Delays in Document Releases
This is not the first time Trump has pledged to release JFK-related files. During his first term, he also promised to declassify the documents but ultimately withheld some due to national security concerns.
The last major release of assassination records occurred in 2022 when the National Archives made nearly 13,000 documents public.
In 1992, Congress passed a law requiring all remaining JFK assassination records to be released by October 2017 unless they posed risks to national security. Both Trump and President Biden later extended the deadline, keeping certain files classified.
With this upcoming release, Trump aims to finally bring closure to decades of speculation and provide the public with a complete look at the long-secret records.
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