President Donald Trump’s administration has released what are believed to be all the U.S. government's remaining classified files on the assassination of President John F Kennedy in 1963.
For the first time, thousands of previously unseen pages of government documents are now available regarding the former president's violent, untimely death in Dallas' Dealey Plaza. The document dump also includes details relating to the assassinations of Senator Robert F Kennedy and civil rights leader Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.
It is unclear whether any new or especially shocking information is contained within the trove of newly released documents.
Jefferson Morley, the author of a newsletter called "JFK Facts" and the author of three books about the CIA and its possible relation to the assassination, told USA Today that the document dump could be a "joke of a release" or it could add significant new information to America’s understanding of JFK's death. But no one will know for sure until the documents are studied in full.
The documents were made public along with the following message from the National Archives and Records Administration: “In accordance with President Donald Trump’s directive of March 17, 2025, all records previously withheld for classification that are part of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection are released.”
National Archives officials said they worked with agencies from across the federal government to compile the records. The documents are available online or can be viewed in person via hard copy or through analog media at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland.
At present, not all of the documents have been digitized, but that process is underway.
The agency said that some details were redacted, but that the information kept private was related to tax return information and can be legally withheld under IRS privacy prohibitions.
On Monday, Trump visited the JFK Center of the Performing Arts, where he has installed himself as the board's chairman, and told reporters that he planned to release the assassination records the following day.
"People have been waiting for decades for this," he said. "We have a tremendous amount of paper. You've got a lot of reading. I don't believe we're going to redact anything.”
Trump promised during his campaign to release the documents, and began working toward their declassification on the first day of his second term. He signed an executive order calling for the full release of all government documents relating to the assassinations of Kennedy, his brother, and King.
The release comes just a month after the FBI said it had found some 2,400 records relating to Kennedy's assassination.
The deaths of all three leaders — Kennedy's in particular — have been the subject of conspiracy theories and finger pointing for decades.
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