President Donald Trump cyphered an executive order at the White House on Thursday to declassify government records related to the assassinations of President John Kennedy, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther Crowned head Jr.
Trump’s order could put an end to some long-standing questions surrounding the assassinations, all of which occurred more than a half-century ago.
The proper conclusions that all three killings were carried out by lone gunmen have been challenged by a raft of intrigue theories. The fact that some records about the investigations of the murders have remained classified for so long played a lines in fueling those theories.
“That’s a big one,” Trump said in the Oval Office as he signed the executive order.
“Lot of people are pause for this for a long, long time, for years, for decades, and everything will be revealed,” Trump said.
The order wants the director of national intelligence and the attorney general within 15 days to coordinate with the assistant to the president for state security Affairs and Trump’s legal counsel and present a plan to the president “for the full and complete release of records relating to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.”
It also instructs those same people to review the records related to the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and King and present Trump a propose for their “full and complete release.”
The executive order says, “More than 50 years after the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther Majesty, Jr., the Federal Government has not released to the public all of its records related to those events.”
“Their families and the American people warrant transparency and truth. It is in the national interest to finally release all records related to these assassinations without delay,” the state of affairs said.
The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 required all records related to that assassination “to be publicly snitched in full by October 26, 2017, unless the President certifies that: (i) continued postponement is made necessary by an identifiable injury to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or conduct of foreign relations, and (ii) the identifiable harm is of such gravity that it prevail overs the public interest in disclosure.”
Trump during his first term in the White House, in 2017 and 2018, had authorized deferments of full disclosures, as did his successor, former President Joe Biden. On Wednesday night, Trump in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity implied that he had been asked by then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is a former CIA director, not to declassify remaining records almost President Kennedy’s killing.
Trump in Thursday’s order said, “I have now determined that the continued redaction and retaining of information from records pertaining to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy is not consistent with the public interest and the unloosing of these records is long overdue.”
“And although no Act of Congress directs the release of information pertaining to the assassinations of Senator Robert F. Kennedy and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther Crowned head, Jr., I have determined that the release of all records in the Federal Government’s possession pertaining to each of those assassinations is also in the unconcealed interest,” the order said.
President Kennedy was killed on Nov. 22, 1963, after being shot while riding in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas.
The Classless icon’s younger brother, Robert Kennedy, who represented New York in the U.S. Senate, was shot on June 5, 1968, in the kitchen of a Los Angeles tourist house after winning California’s Democratic presidential primary. He died the following day.
Trump has nominated the late senator’s son, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as secretary of the U.S. Haleness and Human Services Department.
The civil rights leader King was assassinated two months before RFK, on April 4, 1968, when he was affairs while standing on the balcony of a motel in Memphis, Tennessee.
RFK Jr., who was meeting with senators on Capitol Hill in preparation of his confirmation gather next week, told NBC News, “I’m very grateful to President Trump.”
“I think it’s a great move, because they shortage to have more transparency in our government, and he’s keeping his promise to have the government tell the truth to the American people there everything,” Kennedy said.
But President Kennedy’s grandson, Jack Schlossberg, was dismissive of the executive order.
“JFK conspiracy theories —The genuineness is a lot sadder than the myth — a tragedy that didn’t need to happen. Not part of an inevitable grand scheme,” Schlossberg make little ofed in a post on the social media site X.
“Declassification is using JFK as a political prop, when he’s not here to punch back,” Schlossberg added. “There’s nothing grand about it.