
Things to know about the release of federal documents related to MLK's assassination
In January, President Donald Trump ordered the release of thousands of classified governmental documents about Kennedy's assassination, while also moving to declassify federal records related to the deaths of New York Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and King more than five decades ago.
Trump ordered Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Attorney General Pam Bondi to coordinate with other government officials to review records related to the assassinations of RFK and King, and present a plan to the president for their 'complete release.' Some 10,000 pages of records about the RFK assassination were released April 18.
Justice Department attorneys later asked a federal judge to end a sealing order for the records nearly two years ahead of its expiration date. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which King led, is opposed to unsealing any of the records for privacy reasons. The organization's lawyers said King's relatives also wanted to keep the files under seal.
Scholars, history buffs and journalists have been preparing to study the documents to find new information about the civil rights leader's assassination on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee.
The King family's statement released after Trump's order in January said they hoped to get an opportunity to review the files as a family prior to its public release. King's family, including his two living children, Martin III and Bernice, was given advance notice of the release and had their own teams reviewing the records ahead of the public disclosure.
In a statement released Monday, King's children called their father's case a 'captivating public curiosity for decades.' But they also emphasized the personal nature of the matter and urged that 'these files must be viewed within their full historical context.'
'We ask those who engage with the release of these files to do so with empathy, restraint, and respect for our family's continuing grief,' the statement said.
Here is what we know about the assassination and what scholars had to say ahead of the release of the documents.
In Memphis, shots ring out
King was standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, heading to dinner with a few friends, when he was shot and killed.
King had been in Memphis to support a sanitation workers strike protesting poor working conditions and low pay. The night before the assassination, King delivered the famous 'Mountaintop' speech on a stormy night at the Mason Temple in Memphis.
An earlier march on Beale Street had turned violent, and King had returned to Memphis to lead another march as an expression of nonviolent protest. King also had been planning the Poor People's Campaign to speak out against economic injustice.
The FBI 's investigation
After a long manhunt, James Earl Ray was captured in London, and he pleaded guilty to assassinating King. He later renounced that plea and maintained his innocence until his death in 1998.
FBI documents released over the years show how the bureau wiretapped King's telephone lines, bugged his hotel rooms and used informants to get information against him.
'He was relentlessly targeted by an invasive, predatory, and deeply disturbing disinformation and surveillance campaign,' the King family statement said.
King family's response to the investigation
Members of King's family, and others, have questioned whether Ray acted alone, or if he was even involved. King's widow, Coretta Scott King, asked for the probe to be reopened, and in 1998, then-Attorney General Janet Reno directed the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department to do so.
The Justice Department said it 'found nothing to disturb the 1969 judicial determination that James Earl Ray murdered Dr. King.'
Dexter King, one of King's children, met with Ray in prison in 1997, saying afterwards that he believed Ray's claims of innocence. Dexter King died in 2024.
With the support of King's family, a civil trial in state court was held in Memphis in 1999 against Loyd Jowers, a man alleged to have known about a conspiracy to assassinate King. Dozens of witnesses testified, and a Memphis jury found Jowers and unnamed others, including government agencies, participated in a conspiracy to assassinate King.
What will the public see in the newly released documents?
It's not clear what the records will actually show.
King scholars, for example, would like to see what information the FBI was discussing and circulating as part of their investigation, said Ryan Jones, director of history, interpretation and curatorial services at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis.
'That's critical given the fact the American public, at that time, was unaware that the FBI that is involved in the investigation, was leading a smear campaign to discredit the same man while he was alive,' Jones said. 'They were the same bureau who was receiving notices of assassination attempts against King and ignored them.'
Academics who have studied King also would like to see information about the FBI's surveillance of King, including the extent they went to get details about his personal life, track him, and try to discredit him as anti-American, said Lerone A. Martin, director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University.
However, Martin said he does not expect that the documents will have a 'smoking gun that will finally say, 'See, this is 100% evidence that the FBI was involved in this assassination.''
'We have to view these documents with an eye of suspicion because of the extent the FBI was willing to go to, to try to discredit him,' Martin said.
Why now?
Trump's order about the records release said it is in the 'national interest' to release the records.
'Their families and the American people deserve transparency and truth,' the order said.
However, the timing has led to skepticism from some observers.
Jones questioned why the American public had not been able to see these documents much earlier.
'Why were they sealed on the basis of national security, if the assassin was in prison outside of Nashville?' he said.
Jones said there are scholars who think the records release is a 'PR stunt' by a presidential administration that is 'rewriting, omitting the advances of some people that are tied to people of color, or diversity.'
The Pentagon has faced questions from lawmakers and citizens over the removal of military heroes and historic mentions from Defense Department websites and social media pages after it purged online content that promoted women or minorities. In response, the department restored some of those posts.
Martin said Trump's motivation could be part of an effort to shed doubt on government institutions.
'It could be an opportunity for the Trump administration to say, 'See, the FBI is evil, I've been trying to tell you this. This is why I've put (FBI director) Kash Patel in office because he's cleaning out the Deep State,'' Martin said.
Another factor could be the two attempts on Trump's life as he was campaigning for a second presidential term, and a desire to 'expose the broader history of U.S. assassinations,' said Brian Kwoba, an associate history professor at the University of Memphis.
'That said, it is still a little bit confusing because it's not clear why any U.S. president, including Trump, would want to open up files that could be damaging to the United States and its image both in the U.S. and abroad,' he said.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


The Independent
25 minutes ago
- The Independent
Landlord jailed for decades in hate-crime attack on Palestinian American family has died
A landlord jailed for decades after he attacked a Palestinian American boy and his mother has died. Three months ago, Joseph Czuba was sentenced to 53 years behind bars for the attack. He was found guilty in February of murder, attempted murder and hate-crime charges in the death of Wadee Alfayoumi and the wounding of the boy's mother, Hanan Shaheen. The 73-year-old Czuba targeted them in October 2023 because of their Islamic faith and as a response to the war between Israel and Hamas, which started days earlier. Czuba died Thursday in the custody of the Illinois Department of Corrections, the Chicago Sun-Times reported, citing the Will County Sheriff's Office. The law enforcement agency did not return a call seeking comment on the death. Ahmed Rehab, the executive director of Council on American-Islamic Relations' Chicago office, said in a statement on Saturday that 'this depraved killer has died, but the hate is still alive and well.' Evidence at trial included harrowing testimony from Shaheen and her frantic 911 call, along with bloody crime scene photos and police video. Jurors deliberated less than 90 minutes before handing in a verdict. The family had been renting rooms in Czuba's home in Plainfield, about 40 miles (64 kilometers) from Chicago when the attack happened. Central to prosecutors' case was harrowing testimony from the boy's mother, who said Czuba attacked her before moving on to her son, insisting they had to leave because they were Muslim. Prosecutors also played the 911 call and showed police footage. Czuba's wife, Mary, whom he has since divorced, also testified for the prosecution, saying he had become agitated about the Israel-Hamas war, which had erupted days earlier. Police said Czuba pulled a knife from a holder on a belt and stabbed the boy 26 times, leaving the knife in the child's body. Some of the bloody crime scene photos were so explicit that the judge agreed to turn television screens showing them away from the audience, which included Wadee's relatives. The attack renewed fears of anti-Muslim discrimination and hit particularly hard in Plainfield and surrounding suburbs, which have a large and established Palestinian community. Wadee's funeral drew large crowds, and Plainfield officials have dedicated a park playground in his honor.


The Independent
25 minutes ago
- The Independent
DOGE plans to use AI to identify 50% of 200,000 federal regulations that can be eliminated by Trump
Federal government agencies are reportedly using an artificial intelligence tool from Elon Musk 's DOGE initiative to identify regulations to cut, with a goal of cutting about half from a list of 200,000 federal rules. The tool, the ' DOGE AI Deregulation Tool,' is already in use at the Department of Housing and Urban Development as well as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, The Washington Post reports. The U.S. Doge Service described using the tool to analyze about 200,000 regulations to find ones that officials believe are neither necessary nor legally required, with a goal of cutting half by next January and saving the government trillions of dollars in spending by the anniversary of Trump 's inauguration, according to a PowerPoint presentation obtained by The Post. The DOGE tool has already been used to review more than 1,000 'regulatory sections' at the housing department, as well as to drive '100% of deregulations' at the consumer protection bureau, according to the presentation. The White House and the housing agency described the efforts as preliminary. 'The DOGE experts creating these plans are the best and brightest in the business and are embarking on a never-before-attempted transformation of government systems and operations to enhance efficiency and effectiveness,' an administration spokesperson told the newspaper. The Independent requested comment from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, one of the architects of the DOGE program, once mused about mass-deleting federal spending by culling large numbers of government workers. 'If your Social Security number ends in an odd number, you're out. If it ends in an even number, you're in,' he said in an interview with podcaster Lex Fridman in September. 'There's a 50 percent cut right there. Of those who remain, if your Social Security number starts in an even number, you're in, and if it starts with an odd number, you're out. Boom. That's a 75 percent reduction done.' Musk left the Trump administration in May, and in that time, DOGE failed to achieve the trillion-dollar cuts to federal spending the billionaire suggested might be possible. The effort — housed in a government tech agency renamed as the U.S. DOGE Service via executive order signed by the president,— was met with sharp criticism from Democratic officials, as well as scores of lawsuits from agency employees and advocacy groups arguing the initiative flouted key parts of transparency rules, federal rule-making guidelines, and budget laws. In its first six months, the Trump administration implemented actions reducing regulatory costs by $86 billion and 52.2 million hours in paperwork, according to the American Action Forum.


Daily Record
25 minutes ago
- Daily Record
Four arrested after Trump protests across Scotland and UKIP rally
Police Scotland have confirmed that officers took action at various events across the country on Saturday and a number of people were arrested. At least four people have been arrested following a day of mass protests across Scotland. Scots turned out in force to demonstrate against Donald Trump 's visit to the country in both Aberdeen and Edinburgh, while in Glasgow a march organised by UK Independence Party (UKIP),calling for 'mass deportations' was met by hundreds of counter protesters. Police Scotland have confirmed that officers took action at various events across the country on Saturday, July 26. In Aberdeen, an 18-year-old man was arrested in connection with a number of outstanding warrants and will appear at court at a later date. While 56-year-old man will be subject of a report to the Procurator Fiscal following an alleged assault in Aberdeen city centre. In Glasgow, a 49-year-old woman was arrested in connection with an alleged obstruction of the police following an incident in George Square. A report will be submitted to the Procurator Fiscal. A 50-year-old woman was issued with a Recorded Police Warning in connection with alleged threatening behaviour in Regent Terrace, Edinburgh. Trump arrived in Scotland on Friday and took to his Turnberry golf course on the first full day of his visit. Hundreds gathered in both Edinburgh and Aberdeen – near the site of the US President's other Scottish golf resort – to make their opposition to the president known. A major security operation surrounded him, with police officers and military personnel seen scouring the grounds ahead of Mr Trump teeing off. Sniffer dogs were seen patrolling the golf course in Ayrshire, with the Navy carrying out sweeps in the water beside the seaside course, while Army vehicles were spotted on the nearby A77 road. Police Scotland has asked for support from other forces across the UK to bolster officer numbers for the high profile visit – with Mr Swinney appealing to people to protest 'peacefully and within the law'. In Glasgow, protestors came together on Buchanan Street to oppose a rally organised by UKIP. In a post announcing the march, UKIP said the demonstration would 'send a message to Holyrood that we are taking our country back,' adding: 'the people of Glasgow demand mass-deportations.' UKIP estimated 200 would attend the march through the city centre. The counter protest, attended by trade unionists, faith organisations, and other anti-racist and anti-fascists, was organised by Stand Up to Racism Scotland. Sharing a video of the demo to social media, they said: 'Hundreds of anti-fascists and anti-racists from the trade unions, community and faith organisations have answered the call to say that fascists "shall not pass" in Glasgow.'