President Trump has expressed a longstanding interest in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, attempting during his first administration to release all government documents related to the event and subsequent investigations.
On Tuesday evening, Trump announced the release of additional documents, stating that these files will not be redacted, and suggested they may finally resolve lingering questions about the assassination. However, historians remain skeptical about the potential for new revelations.
The release of these documents follows an executive order issued by Trump in January, which directed national security agencies to prepare plans for disclosing all government records related to the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy. A White House fact sheet emphasized that “more than 50 years after these assassinations,” the victims’ families and the American public deserve the truth.
Trump prioritized the release of records related to Kennedy’s assassination, with plans for the King and Robert Kennedy files to follow, although no specific timeline has been provided for their release.
In 1992, Congress passed a law mandating the National Archives and Records Administration to compile all known U.S. government records concerning the Kennedy assassination. This resulted in the creation of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection, which includes over six million pages of documents, with the recent release comprising 80,000 pages.
Most of the documents were collected by the Church Committee and the House Committee on Assassinations, which investigated the activities of American intelligence agencies and the assassinations of Kennedy and King, respectively. The records from these committees remained classified after their investigations concluded.
The 1992 law was influenced by the public's reaction to Oliver Stone’s 1991 film “J.F.K.,” which questioned the conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in Kennedy's assassination. The Assassination Records Review Board noted that while the film was largely fictional, it highlighted the public's loss of faith in official conclusions due to the secrecy surrounding the records.
Under the law, all records were to be made public within 25 years, barring any identifiable harm to national security or law enforcement. Despite this, approximately 99 percent of the documents had been available for years, with thousands still withheld as the 1992 deadline approached.
During his first term, Trump promised to release all remaining documents but ultimately agreed to some redactions to protect sensitive information. Between 2017 and 2023, there were four releases of files, and in 2023, President Biden confirmed that the law's requirements had been met, although nearly 5,000 documents remained withheld due to intelligence agency concerns.
Historians do not anticipate major surprises from the newly released files, as they expect the consensus that Oswald acted alone to remain intact. However, the documents may provide new insights into Oswald’s activities leading up to the assassination, including his visits to the Soviet and Cuban embassies in Mexico City, and the extent of information sharing among agencies regarding his connections.
All declassified government records are now accessible to both scholars and the public, either online or in person. The archives have initiated efforts to digitize all released Kennedy assassination records, with 700,000 documents already available online prior to this latest release.
Further records may still emerge, as the FBI recently announced it had found approximately 2,400 additional records in response to Trump’s executive order, which are being transferred to the National Archives. Other relevant documents may continue to surface from various sources, including those under grand jury seal or from private collections with conditions on their release.