Trump administration releases Martin Luther King Jr. assassination files

The Trump administration on Monday released more than 230,000 files related to the April 1968 assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who announced the move, said the files include “discussion of potential leads, internal FBI memos detailing the progress of the case, information about James Earl Ray’s former cellmate who stated he discussed with Ray an alleged assassination plot, and more.” She said the files released Monday had not previously been digitized and were shared with minimal redactions.

King’s son Martin Luther King III and daughter Bernice A. King wrote in a statement that they “object to any attacks on our father’s legacy or attempts to weaponize it to spread falsehoods” and warned against people sharing FBI surveillance of their father in the files.

“We strongly condemn any attempts to misuse these documents in ways intended to undermine our father’s legacy and the significant achievements of the movement,” they wrote. “Those who promote the fruit of the FBI’s surveillance will unknowingly align themselves with an ongoing campaign to degrade our father and the Civil Rights Movement.”

The King children said that the files “must be viewed within their full historical context,” that their father “was relentlessly targeted by an invasive, predatory, and deeply disturbing disinformation and surveillance campaign orchestrated by” then-FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.

King’s niece Alveda King appeared to take a different view, saying in a statement that “the declassification and release of these documents are a historic step towards the truth.”

Ray was convicted of the assassination of King after fleeing the country and being captured abroad, and Gabbard said the documents include CIA records outlining “overseas intelligence on the international hunt for the prime suspect.” But the King children reaffirmed that they believe someone else was the shooter and that Ray was set up to take the fall.

“As we review these newly released files, we will assess whether they offer additional insights beyond the findings our family has already accepted,” the Kings said. They asked for people engaging with the files to “do so with empathy, restraint, and respect for our family’s continuing grief.”

Trump signed an executive order in January directing the release of the assassination records of King and President John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert F. Kennedy. Last month, a federal judge said it could be a “long journey” toward releasing the King FBI surveillance records, and at the time, King’s children and the King-founded civil rights organization the Southern Christian Leadership Conference opposed the unconditional public release of information compiled by the FBI.

The release of the King documents on Monday comes as Democrats and some members of Trump’s base have demanded the release of a different trove of records, those related to the sex trafficking investigation of Jeffrey Epstein. Trump on Thursday told the Justice Department to seek the release of “all pertinent” grand jury testimony, following the administration’s announcement earlier this month that it would not release the files from the case.

Clayborne Carson, a professor of history at Stanford University who was handpicked by Coretta Scott King to publish her late husband’s personal writings as part of the King Papers Project, said he had not yet reviewed the documents but questioned the timing of the release.

Carson said he was unsure if the newly released documents would shed fresh light on the slain civil rights leader’s life or murder – or if anything the FBI had to report about King could be viewed as “trustworthy.” He pointed to the agency’s history under then-director J. Edgar Hoover of treating King as “an enemy,” including its use of illegal tactics, like wiretaps, to gain intelligence and unflattering information about King in an attempt to diminish his influence.

“As a historian, I enjoy looking at records and evaluating them. You know, are they truthful? What is the motive of the person who produced the records? And so anytime there’s a release of new information about Martin Luther King, the second question would be, ‘How was this information garnered? Was it a through breaking law?’ It is illegal to wiretap somebody, and certainly to put a listening device in your room, and I know that that was done with Martin Luther King.”