FBI’s MLK Records Released By Trump Administration

Topline

While the Trump administration faces demands to release filings on financier Jeffrey Epstein, the Justice Department and U.S. intelligence officials on Monday unveiled records detailing the FBI’s surveillance of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. years ahead of their originally scheduled release.

The release includes more than 240,000 pages of the FBI’s surveillance of the civil rights leader, … More which had been under seal for decades.

AP1960

Key Facts

The records release, announced Monday by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, contains more than 240,000 pages of documents, though it’s not immediately clear whether the filings included new information on King’s life or his assassination.

President Donald Trump issued an executive order in January to unseal records related to President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, as well as Robert F. Kennedy’s and King’s assassinations in 1968.

Martin Luther King III and Bernice King, King’s living children, said in a statement on X the files should be “viewed within their full historical context” and engaged with “empathy, restraint, and respect for our family’s continuing grief.”

Martin Luther King III, 67, and Bernice King, 62, claimed their father was “relentlessly targeted by an invasive, predatory and deeply disturbing disinformation surveillance” campaign by the FBI and repeated their enduring belief James Earl Ray, who was convicted of King’s assassination, was “set up to take the blame,” citing a 1999 wrongful death case in which a Memphis, Tennessee, jury found King was the target of a larger conspiracy.

What Do The Mlk Files Say?

The documents include details about the FBI’s investigation into King’s assassination, Gabbard said, including potential leads, internal FBI memos and documents related to a former cellmate to Ray, and statements the cellmate made about discussing an alleged assassination plot with Ray. The records also include evidence from Canadian law enforcement who joined an international search for Ray and “never-before-seen” CIA records detailing “overseas intelligence” on the hunt for Ray, Gabbard said. The newly released files expand on previously released details on the FBI’s investigation following King’s death in 1968, but it’s not immediately clear if major new revelations were unsealed.

Chief Critic

The Rev. Al Sharpton, a civil rights activist and friend of the King family, said in a statement the release of the FBI’s records into King were a “desperate attempt to distract from the firestorm engulfing Trump over the Epstein files and the public unraveling of his credibility among the MAGA base.”

Key Background

The FBI’s records into King were sealed by a court order in 1977 and were scheduled to be released in January 2027 before the Trump administration’s recent efforts. Ed Martin, at the time the Trump-appointed interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, requested in March for the FBI’s files to be released sooner, citing “strong public interest in understanding the truth about [King’s] assassination.” The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the civil rights group which King led, opposed the records release, arguing their unsealing would likely have no interest to the public and that Trump had no authority to lift a court-ordered seal. King’s family also claimed the filings could alter the public perception of him and the Civil Rights Movement and had requested the Trump administration disclose the records to them before they were publicly released.

Tangent

Epstein’s relationship with Trump has recently come under a closer lens as more details are reported about their ties. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Trump sent Epstein a sexually suggestive birthday card in 2023, a claim Trump denied before suing the publication. Over the weekend, The New York Times reported alleged Epstein victim Maria Farmer reported to the FBI an encounter she had with Trump in Epstein’s office in 1995. Some Republicans have criticized Trump over the DOJ’s refusal to release the entirety of its Epstein findings, including Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who said Monday that “dangling bits of red meat no longer satisfies.”