In a significant move, President Trump has taken decisive action to unravel decades of secrecy surrounding the tragic assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. During a momentous signing at the White House on Thursday, Trump announced the declassification of all remaining files related to these pivotal events in American history, stirring excitement among the public.
According to reports from CBS, an aide outlined the president’s executive action, stating it “orders the declassification of files relating to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and Dr. Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.” Trump remarked with palpable enthusiasm, “That’s a big one, huh? A lot of people have been waiting for this for a long time—years, even decades!”
In a poignant gesture, Trump instructed his aide to present the pen he used to sign the executive order to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the son of the late senator and Mr. Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. The elder Kennedy, a former attorney general and New York senator, tragically lost his life in 1968 during his campaign for the presidency.
Earlier in 2022, after the release of some JFK files, the National Archives and Records Administration stated that 97% of the approximately five million pages in its possession concerning the assassination were now public.
Trump had pledged during his first term in 2017 to unveil the remaining JFK files, which included around 3,000 documents that had never seen the light of day and an additional 30,000 previously released but still redacted. However, not all files were made public back then.
In 1992, Congress mandated that all assassination-related documents be released within 25 years, marking a crucial step toward transparency in a nation still grappling with the shadows of its past.
