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Sunday, August 31, 2025

Donald Trump vows to release top secret files on major assassinations ‘in days’

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Donald Trump could put dozens of conspiracies to rest when he returns to the White House this week following promises to release sensitive top-secret JFK assassination files.

Mr Trump, 78, will be inaugurated as the 47th President of the United States today following a shock win against his Democrat challenger Kamala Harris in November. His triumphant return to the Oval Office is tinged with fear for many Americans, many of whom fear a vengeance-filled Trump will lash out at his opponents, political or otherwise.

But at least in the interim, the President-elect appears laser-focused on carrying out other promises through a series of executive actions, with a flurry of orders set to fly across the Resolute desk today. Among his key concerns for the early days of his new term, he has said, is carrying out a long-held promise to release classified documents pertaining to the assassination of John F Kennedy.

Mr Trump promised during a “Make America Great Again Victory Rally” at the Capital One Arena in Washington DC on Sunday that he would release remaining records relating to major assassinations “in the coming days”. He promised: “In the coming days, we are going to make public remaining records related to the assassinations of President John F Kennedy, his brother Robert F Kennedy, as well as Dr Martin Luther King Jr and other topics of great public interest.”

The incoming President has made the promise before, but this is the first time he has mentioned Martin Luther King in his promise to declassify documents pertaining to famous assassinations. He dangled the possibility of releasing more documents during his 2024 campaign after Kennedy scion RFK Jr suspended his independent campaign in June to offer his backing for the Republican contender.

Speaking after RFK Jr announced he would back Mr Trump, the President pledged to establish a new independent presidential commission on assassination attempts that would see any remaining documents from the cases of his uncle and father, RFK’s and uncles killings in 1962 and 1968.

While his father’s assassination at the hands of Sirhan Bishara Sirhan has long been accepted as resulting from his hatred of Kennedy for supporting Israel, US lawmakers have only concluded so far that JFK’s death was the result of a “conspiracy”. The assassination of the latter Kennedy, then a sitting President, has spawned dozens of conspiracy theories.

The primary cause of these theories relates to his killer, Lee Harvey Oswald, whose motive in the killing has been extensively explored but never confirmed. James Earl Ray’s killing of Martin Luther King Junior has received similar attention from conspiracy theorists, some of whom believe Ray was a scapegoat for a larger plot to thwart the civil rights icon’s campaigning.

Mr Trump has previously promised to release archival documents relating to the assassination, pledging in 2017 he wanted “great transparency” and wished to “get just about everything to public”. But he ultimately delayed a full release on national security grounds.

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