Trump Orders Release of Last Files on JFK Assassination

After an aide announced the president was signing the executive action "ordering the declassification of files relating to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and Dr. Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.," Trump said, "That's a big one, huh? A lot of people are waiting for this for a long — for years, for decades."

Trump instructed his aide to give the pen he used to sign the order to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the son of the late Robert F. Kennedy and Trump's nominee to run the Department of Health and Human Services. The elder Kennedy served as US attorney general, New York senator and was a Democratic presidential candidate when he was slain in 1968, CBS News reported.

Trump is ordering the director of national intelligence and attorney general to spend the next 15 days coming up with a plan to release the JFK files. Then, they have 45 days to come up with plans to release all the RFK and MLK files.

In a statement provided to CBS News on Thursday evening, the FBI said it is "complying" with the executive order that "requires the review within 15 days of 'records related to' the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and within 45 days related to the assassinations of Senator Robert F. Kennedy and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr."

After a release of some of the JFK files in 2022, the National Archives and Records Administration said 97% of the roughly 5 million pages in its collection related to the assassination were public.

The president promised during his first administration in 2017 that he would release the remaining JFK files. That included some 3,000 documents that had never been made public and 30,000 that had been previously released with redactions, but not all of the files were made public during his first term.

In 1992, Congress mandated that all assassination documents were to be released within 25 years.