Hillary Clinton (L), Martin Luther King Jr.
Credit: Reuters, Getty Images
While there is much talk about the Epstein Files with growing demand from different quarters of the society to release the contentious documents, the Donald Trump administration on Monday decided to drop some other files.
These files concern the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., including records from the FBI, which had surveilled the civil rights leader as part of an effort to discredit the Nobel Peace Prize winner and his civil rights movement.
Apart from the 240,000 pages on the civil rights activist's assassination, the administration has also released 35 pages of documents on Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server and mishandling of highly classified information during her time as Secretary of State.
Here are some key highlights from the documents.
King's death and the aftermath
King died of an assassin's bullet in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968, as he increasingly extended his attention from a nonviolent campaign for equal rights for African Americans to economic issues and calls for peace. His death shook the United States in a year that would also bring race riots, anti-Vietnam war demonstrations and the assassination of presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy.
Investigation leads, interviews
As per a New York Times report, Trump administration officials said the King assassination documents include notes on the leads pursued by investigators, interviews with people who knew his killer, James Earl Ray, and previously unreleased details of interactions with foreign intelligence services during the search for Ray.
Audio file of Earl Ray’s brother
A lone audio file released Monday includes part of a law enforcement interview with Jerry Ray, one of James Earl Ray’s siblings, according to NYT. In a statement, officials said the published documents had “never been digitized and sat collecting dust in facilities across the federal government for decades.”
James Earl Ray's James Bond connection
The NYT report points out that many of the pages of the concerned documents have been rendered almost illegible by time and the digitizing process. There were random and wide-ranging accounts of the investigation and search for Ray, including hundreds of news clippings, tips from the public, accounts of Ray’s forays into dance classes and locksmith school, and his fondness for aliases drawn from James Bond novels.
The FBI wiretaps and other surveillance were part of an effort to uncover damaging material on King, which the agency hoped to leverage in its campaign to derail the Civil Rights Movement. Tapes and transcripts from that surveillance are part of what remains under seal.
Clinton's alleged mishandling of classified information
The 2016 Democratic presidential nominee faced an investigation for her alleged use of a private email server for the sake of convenience during her time as secretary of state in the Obama administration.
Before the presidential election between Clinton and Donald Trump, the FBI had recommended to the Department of Justice against pursuing criminal charges in the matter.
Director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard had claimed that Obama-era officials reportedly "manufactured and politicised intelligence" to create the narrative that Russia was attempting to influence the 2016 US presidential election.
'Lack of effort from FBI'
“This document shows an extreme lack of effort and due diligence in the FBI’s investigation of former Secretary Clinton’s email usage and mishandling of highly classified information,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley said in a press release on Monday.
James Comey under lens
The Department of Justice Office of Inspector General's Clinton annex shows the FBI obtained thumb drives from a source during the Clinton investigation, but then-FBI Director James Comey, as well as then-Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, former FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok and others, failed to perform additional, targeted searches of the drives, even though they contained information relevant to the inquiry.
Obama admin protected Clinton's candidacy
As per the report, the FBI also obtained intelligence reports discussing purported communications between Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), who was chairwoman of the Democratic National Convention (DNC) at the time, and two different individuals who worked for the Soros Open Society Foundations. The intelligence reports alleged that the Obama administration took efforts to scuttle the investigation into Clinton and protect her candidacy.
(With inputs from agencies)