President Donald Trump on Monday announced that he would release around 80,000 unredacted files on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on Tuesday.
Trump made the announcement while touring the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.
“While we’re here, I thought it would be appropriate, we are, tomorrow, announcing and giving all of the Kennedy files. So, people have been waiting for decades for this, and I’ve instructed my people… lots of different people, [director of national intelligence] Tulsi Gabbard, that they must be released tomorrow,” he said.
“You got a lot of reading. I don’t believe we’re going to redact anything. I said, ‘just don’t redact, you can’t redact,’” the president said.
DEADLINE LOOMS FOR RELEASE OF JFK ASSASSINATION FILES
He noted that the files would be “very interesting.”
In January, Trump signed an executive order directing the release of federal government documents related to the assassinations of Kennedy, former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.
TRUMP SIGNS ORDER TO DECLASSIFY FILES ON JFK, RFK AND MLK ASSASSINATIONS
Trump had promised to release the previously classified documents during his 2024 campaign after decades of speculation and conspiracy theories about the killings.
“Everything will be revealed,” Trump told reporters at the time.
During his first term in office, Trump promised to release all the files related to John F. Kennedy, but an undisclosed amount of material remains under wraps more than six decades after Kennedy was killed Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas. The primary suspect, Lee Harvey Oswald, was killed two days later by Jack Ruby.
After appeals from the CIA and FBI, Trump blocked the release of hundreds of records. Trump said at the time the potential harm to U.S. national security, law enforcement or foreign affairs is “of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in immediate disclosure.”
The JFK assassination has remained a point of interest among the public for decades amid conspiracy theories about the involvement of a second shooter.
