Trump to release assassination records for JFK, RFK, and MLK

 

Trump orders release of classified JFK, RFK, MLK

assassination records

U.S. President Donald Trump has ordered the release of thousands of classified governmental documents about the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, which has fueled conspiracy theories for decades.

The executive order Trump signed Thursday also aims to declassify the remaining federal records relating to the assassinations of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The order is among a flurry of executive actions Trump has quickly taken the first week of his second term.

Speaking to reporters, Trump said, “everything will be revealed.”

Will it really? Or, will everything important be redacted?

Trump had promised during his reelection campaign to make public the last batches of still-classified documents surrounding President Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas, which has transfixed people for decades. He made a similar pledge during his first term, but ultimately bended to appeals from the CIA and FBI to keep some documents withheld.

Trump has nominated Kennedy’s nephew, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to be the health secretary in his new administration. Kennedy, whose father, Robert F. Kennedy, was assassinated in 1968 while running for president and has said he isn’t convinced that a lone gunman was solely responsible for the assassination of his uncle, President Kennedy, in 1963.

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The order directs the director of national intelligence and the attorney general to develop a plan within 15 days to declassify the remaining John F. Kennedy records, and within 45 days for the other two cases. It was not clear when the records would actually be released.

Trump handed the pen used to sign the order to an aide and directed it to be given to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Only a few thousand of the millions of governmental records related to the assassination of President Kennedy have yet to be fully declassified. And while many who have studied what’s been released so far say the public shouldn’t anticipate any earth-shattering revelations, there is still an intense interest in details related to the assassination and the events surrounding it.

“There’s always the possibility that something would slip through that would be the tiny tip of a much larger iceberg that would be revealing,” said Larry J. Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics and author of “The Kennedy Half-Century.” “That’s what researchers look for. Now, odds are you won’t find that but it is possible that it’s there.”

Kennedy was fatally shot in downtown Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, as his motorcade passed in front of the Texas School Book Depository building, where 24-year-old assassin Lee Harvey Oswald had positioned himself from a sniper’s perch on the sixth floor. Two days after Kennedy was killed, nightclub owner Jack Ruby fatally shot Oswald during a jail transfer.

In the early 1990s, the federal government mandated that all assassination-related documents be housed in a single collection in the National Archives and Records Administration. The collection of over 5 million records was required to be opened by 2017, barring any exemptions designated by the president.

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During his first term, Trump boasted that he’d allow the release of all of the remaining records on the president’s assassination but ended up holding some back because of what he called the potential harm to national security. And while files have continued to be released under President Joe Biden, some still remain unseen.

Sabato, who trains student researchers to comb through the documents, said that most researchers agree that “roughly” 3,000 records have not yet been released, either in whole or in part, and many of those originated with the CIA.

The documents released over the last several years offer details on the way intelligence services operated at the time, and include CIA cables and memos discussing visits by Oswald to the Soviet and Cuban embassies during a trip to Mexico City just weeks before the assassination. The former Marine had previously defected to the Soviet Union before returning home to Texas.

There are still some documents in the collection though that researchers don’t believe the president would be able to release. Around 500 documents, including tax returns, weren’t subject to the 2017 disclosure requirement. And, researchers note, documents have also been destroyed over the decades.

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George Soros' America > Philadelphia Sets All-Time Murder Record

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Philadelphia sets all-time murder record under Soros funded DA

© AFP / Gabriella Audi

The city of Philadelphia has set a record in 2021 with 559 murders committed, the most in its history since records began. It has outstripped more populous cities that have also seen rates spike, like New York and Los Angeles.

The rate surged from last year’s 499 murders and represented a major increase from 2019’s 356 killings. Children have been among the worst impacted, with some 206 kids and teens hit by gunfire over the past year, 36 of them fatally. All told, about 2,200 Philadelphians were shot over the course of 2021.

“Council and the Mayor clearly must do more in 2022,” City Council President Darell Clarke said in a statement on Friday. Philadelphia earmarked $155 million for public safety in its last budget, with $16 million of that designated for neighborhood-based groups countering violence; Clarke insisted those budgetary decisions must “target actual solutions.”

While some have called for Mayor Jim Kenney to declare gun violence an emergency, Kenney countered that declaring such an emergency would have “no discernible impact on strengthening what is already a highly collaborative and innovative approach to addressing this public health crisis.” Declaring such ‘emergencies’ gives local governments more funding and power to act unilaterally, but there is little evidence to suggest they have any direct effect on curbing violence. The City Council has also called for Philadelphia to be able to set its own gun laws, a measure that has had varying degrees of success in cities like New York and Chicago. The latter had more murders in 2021 than anywhere else in the US.

Many blame the city’s District Attorney Larry Krasner, one of several so-called ‘progressive prosecutors’ who won their positions thanks in large part to campaigns sponsored by billionaire George Soros. Like fellow DAs Chesa Boudin (San Francisco), Kim Foxx (Chicago), and George Gascon (Los Angeles), Krasner has quickly developed a reputation for being soft on crime, one that has grown alongside his city’s body count.

Soros-funded DAs tend to invite strong ‘Defund the Police’ movements, and Philadelphia’s Black Lives Matter chapter made its voice heard in 2020 loud enough to convince 14 of the city’s 17 City Council members not to support a proposed $14 million increase to the police budget. Last year, the city decreased the police budget by $33 million, a figure it has kept for 2022. 

Philadelphia only began keeping homicide records in the 1960s. However, last year’s murders far surpassed what is considered to be the city’s most violent period during the crack epidemic of the 1990s.