The grandson of former US president John F Kennedy has hit out at Donald Trump for ordering the release of thousands of classified files on his grandfather's assassination.
President Trump signed an executive order on Thursday to declassify the remaining federal records relating to the 1963 killing of then president Kennedy in Dallas.
He had promised during his election campaign to make public the last withheld records on the case, which has fueled conspiracy theories for decades.
Trump made a similar pledge during his first term, but ultimately bent to appeals from the CIA and FBI to withhold some documents.
JFK's grandson Jack Schlossberg hit out at President Trump's executive order, saying there was "nothing heroic" about it.
"The truth is alot sadder than the myth - a tragedy that didn't need to happen. Not part of an inevitable grand scheme," he wrote on X.
"Declassification is using JFK as a political prop, when he's not here to punch back."
JFK conspiracy theories —
— Jack Schlossberg (@JBKSchlossberg) January 23, 2025
The truth is alot sadder than the myth — a tragedy that didn’t need to happen. Not part of an inevitable grand scheme.
Declassification is using JFK as a political prop, when he’s not here to punch back.
There’s nothing heroic about it.
Jack
Speaking to reporters after signing the order, Trump said, "everything will be revealed."
The fatal shooting of Kennedy in downtown Dallas on November 22, 1963, as his motorcade passed in front of the Texas School Book Depository building, is the source of one of the most well-known conspiracy theories of modern times.
Lee Harvey Oswald was said to be the gunman, shooting dead the president, from a sniper's perch on the sixth floor of the building, as he sat next to wife Jackie in an open top car.
But theories that have persisted include that there was a second shooter and that it was plot connected to communist Cuba.
Two days after Kennedy was killed, nightclub owner Jack Ruby fatally shot Oswald during a jail transfer.
Trump has nominated Kennedy's nephew, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, to be the health secretary in his new administration.
RFK Jr has said he isn't convinced that a lone gunman was solely responsible for the assassination of his uncle.
After signing the order, Mr Trump ordered the pen should be given to RFK Jr.
The order will also declassify remaining federal records on the assassinations of civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr in 1968, and JFK's brother, Robert F Kennedy, who was shot dead the same year while running for president.
James Earl Ray pleaded guilty to assassinating King. He later though renounced that plea and maintained his innocence up until his death.
The order directs the director of national intelligence and the attorney general to develop a plan within 15 days to release the remaining John F. Kennedy records, and within 45 days for the other two cases. It was not clear when the records would actually be released.
Only a few thousand of the millions of records on the JFK case are still to be fully declassified.
"There's always the possibility that something would slip through that would be the tiny tip of a much larger iceberg that would be revealing," said Larry J Sabato, author of a book on Kennedy.
"That's what researchers look for. Now, odds are you won't find that but it is possible that it's there."
