President Donald Trump announced that his administration will release approximately 80,000 pages of documents related to the 1963 assassination of former US President John F. Kennedy on Tuesday, reviving long-standing public interest in one of the country’s most debated historical events.
Speaking to reporters at the Kennedy Center in Washington on Monday, Trump said the files would be released in full.
“I don’t believe we are going to redact anything,” he said. “I said, ‘just don’t redact, you can’t redact.’ But we are going to be releasing the JFK files.”
The announcement follows an executive order signed in January, directing a full and complete release of all remaining documents related to the assassination of JFK, as well as files concerning the deaths of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr and Senator Robert F. Kennedy.
Trump said the release would contain “a lot of reading” and promised it would be “very interesting.”
Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, an event that has generated conspiracy theories for decades. Public opinion surveys consistently show widespread scepticism of the official findings that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.
A 2023 Gallup poll found that 65% of Americans did not accept the Warren Commission’s conclusion. Around 20% believed Oswald conspired with the US government, and 16% thought he worked with the CIA.
Under the 1992 JFK Records Act, the US government was required to release all relevant documents by 2017 unless the president determined their release posed a national security risk.
During Trump’s first administration, only around 2,800 documents were released after intelligence agencies requested further time to review the remaining materials.
Former President Joe Biden later authorised the release of around 17,000 additional records. Fewer than 4,700 files remain partially or fully classified.
The National Archives says more than 99% of approximately 320,000 documents reviewed under the Act have now been released.
This new release is part of a wider directive by Trump that also includes records linked to the 1968 assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr and Robert F. Kennedy. Trump has instructed Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard to submit a plan for the declassification of these files as well.
In February, the FBI confirmed it had uncovered over 2,400 previously unseen documents related to the JFK assassination.
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