Trump promises, again, to release ‘all’ Kennedy assassination files

President Donald Trump said officials planned to disclose a trove of classified government files Tuesday about the assassination of President John F Kennedy, and he suggested there would be no redactions this time — in contrast to releases during his previous administration.

The National Archives and other agencies have provided no details or a timeline for the release of the files, however, and it was unclear if they would be disclosed all at once, or in batches over the coming days or weeks. Hundreds of thousands of assassination documents have already been revealed under a 1992 law.

During a visit to the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on Monday, Trump said the new release would total about 80,000 pages. He did not provide additional details on what the files would include, but he has long promised to release the unredacted documents.

“You got a lot of reading,” he told reporters at the Kennedy Center, the cultural and political institution that he took over nearly five weeks ago, installing himself as chair. “I don’t believe we’re going to redact anything.”

Days after starting his second term in the White House, Trump signed an executive order mandating the release of all government records related to the assassinations of Kennedy; Kennedy’s brother, Sen. Robert F Kennedy; and the Rev Martin Luther King Jr.

John F Kennedy’s assassination, in particular, has long fueled conspiracy theories, including some that Trump himself has indulged.

A 1992 law required the government to release documents related to the killing within 25 years, except documents that could harm national security. In 2017, Trump released some additional documents, but he also gave the intelligence agencies more time to assess the files and include redactions.

The National Archives and Records Administration has said the government has released 99 per cent of the roughly 320,000 documents that have been reviewed since 1992. But thousands of documents have remained fully or partially withheld for national security reasons or because they are under grand jury seal or related reasons.

Historians have said they do not expect any major new revelations in these documents, or any information that would contradict the basic circumstances of the case. Every government authority that has examined Kennedy’s death has come to the same conclusion: He was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald, who fired a rifle from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository on Nov 22, 1963.

But polls have consistently shown that most Americans still believe that someone other than Oswald must have been involved, in part because the evidence from government agencies that investigated the killing was hidden for so long.

When the Biden administration released a raft of Kennedy assassination papers in 2023, officials said they were confident that none of the withheld information would change the basic understanding of the assassination.

Nonetheless, any new details are eagerly pored over by historians and conspiracy theorists alike. Experts said they were waiting to inspect the documents set to be released Tuesday in hopes of discovering at least a few new historical nuggets about the last time a president was killed in office.

This is likely to be one of the last releases of Kennedy documents, considering how few are left to be disclosed. However, the FBI said in February that it had discovered about 2,400 new documents during a search after Trump’s order, although it gave no indication of what they might contain.

It’s unclear if those documents will be part of the release that Trump said would happen Tuesday.