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Trump releases Martin Luther King assassination files

Trump releases Martin Luther King assassination files

Reuters22-07-2025
WASHINGTON, July 21 (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department on Monday released more than 240,000 pages of documents related to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., including records from the FBI, which had surveilled the civil rights leader as part of an effort to discredit the Nobel Peace Prize winner and his civil rights movement.
Files were posted, opens new tab on the website of the National Archives, which said more would be released.
King died of an assassin's bullet in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968, as he increasingly extended his attention from a nonviolent campaign for equal rights for African Americans to economic issues and calls for peace. His death shook the United States in a year that would also bring race riots, anti-Vietnam war demonstrations and the assassination of presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy.
Earlier this year, President Donald Trump's administration released thousands of pages of digital documents related to the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and former President John F. Kennedy, who was killed in 1963.
Trump promised on the campaign trail to provide more transparency about Kennedy's death. Upon taking office, he also ordered aides to present a plan for the release of records relating to the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and King.
The FBI kept files on King in the 1950s and 1960s - even wiretapping his phones - because of what the bureau falsely said at the time were his suspected ties to communism during the Cold War between the U.S. and Soviet Union. In recent years, the FBI has acknowledged that as an example of "abuse and overreach" in its history.
The civil rights leader's family asked those who engage with the files to "do so with empathy, restraint, and respect for our family's continuing grief," and condemned "any attempts to misuse these documents."
"Now more than ever, we must honor his sacrifice by committing ourselves to the realization of his dream – a society rooted in compassion, unity, and equality," they said in a statement.
"During our father's lifetime, he was relentlessly targeted by an invasive, predatory, and deeply disturbing disinformation and surveillance campaign orchestrated by J. Edgar Hoover through the Federal Bureau of Investigation," the family, including his two living children, Martin III, 67, and Bernice, 62, said, referring to the then-FBI director.
James Earl Ray, a segregationist and drifter, confessed to killing King but later recanted. He died in prison in 1998.
King's family said it had filed a wrongful death civil lawsuit in Tennessee in 1999 that led to a jury unanimously concluding "that our father was the victim of a conspiracy involving Loyd Jowers and unnamed co-conspirators, including government agencies as a part of a wider scheme. The verdict also affirmed that someone other than James Earl Ray was the shooter, and that Mr. Ray was set up to take the blame. Our family views that verdict as an affirmation of our long-held beliefs."
Jowers, once a Memphis police officer, told ABC's Prime Time Live in 1993 that he participated in a plot to kill King. A 2023 Justice Department report, opens new tab called his claims dubious.
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I thought I was having a secret, sext Facebook affair but it cost me £11K – my ‘lover' still hounds me three years on
I thought I was having a secret, sext Facebook affair but it cost me £11K – my ‘lover' still hounds me three years on

The Sun

time7 minutes ago

  • The Sun

I thought I was having a secret, sext Facebook affair but it cost me £11K – my ‘lover' still hounds me three years on

WHEN Susan Green got a message through on Facebook complimenting her jewellery business, she thought nothing of it. The 63-year-old said she and the man, who went by Vuitton David, immediately hit it off and struck up a conversation. 3 3 Susan was selling jewellery on the social media site in November 2022 when she got the friend request from the man. But she soon realised that his name was fake and it was all a ploy to hand over her money. Now three years on, the sextortion scammer is still hounding Susan for money. She says that within one month, the conversation turned sexual - after he started asking what her type was and what sex positions she liked. Susan - who is married to John, 40 - claims the man asked her to send nude photos, telling her if she didn't send them, he would leak their conversations. After she sent him a naked photo, Susan claims he started blackmailing her for money, and told her if she didn't send it, he would leak her intimate photos. 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"Every time my phone rang, every time my husband got a text, I was worried that something was happening." In 2022, Susan was selling items online when she received a Facebook request from a man she didn't know. The mum-of-two accepted the friend request and soon received a message from him asking her how she was. She said: "It began with him asking how I was and he started saying my jewellery collection was beautiful. "Then he started asking sexual questions, he would ask what I like to do during sex, what partners I pick, and what I would like to do with him." Susan claims the stranger started asking her for sexual photos, which she refused to send at first, but insisted he threatened to leak their messages if she didn't. Out of fear of her family finding out, Susan continued to send money to the person who was bribing her. She said: "He said, 'unless you send me a picture, you can expect to see this on your Facebook page.' "He would ask me for sexual photos, and I sent them to him. 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IMF upgrades global growth forecast as Trump tariffs ease, but warns on risks
IMF upgrades global growth forecast as Trump tariffs ease, but warns on risks

The Guardian

time2 hours ago

  • The Guardian

IMF upgrades global growth forecast as Trump tariffs ease, but warns on risks

Global growth will be stronger than previously expected this year after Donald Trump scaled back his most extreme tariff threats, the International Monetary Fund said as it upgraded the economic outlook for 2025. The Washington-based organisation said a 'de-escalation in tariffs' by the White House spurred a recovery in global trade and a broader economic expansion, though US policies remain 'highly uncertain' and risks to growth remain 'firmly on the downside'. The IMF chief economist, Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, upgraded a forecast for global growth in 2025 to 3% from an estimate in April of 2.8%. The outlook for 2026 was upgraded from 3% to 3.1%. The global economy grew by 3.3% in 2024. Most regions benefited from the more benign economic outlook, including the UK, which is expected to grow by 1.2% this year – 0.1 percentage points higher than in the IMF's April outlook. In April, Donald Trump threatened to impose severe import tariffs on the world's biggest exporters of goods, including the UK, EU, China and South Korea, to combat what the US president believed was unfair competition. Stock markets dived and the US dollar fell as investors, spooked by the potential hit to world trade, bought safe havenassets. The US later delayed or reduced tariffs in return for commitments to buy US-made goods, reversing market falls as investors concluded 'Trump always chickens out' – or Taco for short. At the weekend Trump agreed to end months of speculation over whether he would impose 30% tariffs on EU goods imports, saying he would limit the rise to 15% in exchange for concessions from the EU, including the purchase of almost £600bn worth of US oil and gas. The French prime minister described the US-EU trade deal as a 'dark day' for Europe. Japan recently agreed to buy Boeing planes as part of a deal to limit tariffs on its exports to the US to 15%. And Trump has also scaled back tariffs on Chinese goods, though only after Beijing retaliated by imposing punitive tariffs on rare earth metals needed by defence industry manufacturers. Gourinchas said the US had 'partly reversed course', reducing the US effective tariff rate from 24% to about 17%. But he added: 'Despite these welcome developments, tariffs remain historically high, and global policy remains highly uncertain, with only a few countries having reached fully fleshed-out trade agreements.' The White House has set a deadline of 1 August for several countries, including Vietnam and South Korea, to sign deals with the US. Sign up to Business Today Get set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning after newsletter promotion 'Without comprehensive agreements, the ongoing trade uncertainty could increasingly weigh on investment and activity,' Gourinchas said. He said the situation could also worsen should attacks on central banks intensify, undermining their authority. Trump has repeatedly called on Jerome Powell, the chair of the US Federal Reserve, to cut interest rates, calling him a 'numbskull' for failing to do so. 'It is important to reaffirm and preserve the principle of central bank independence. The evidence is overwhelming that independent central banks, with a narrow mandate to pursue price and economic stability, are essential to anchoring inflation expectations,' he added. 'That central banks around the world achieved a successful 'soft landing' despite the recent surge in inflation owes a great deal to their independence and hard-earned credibility.' Trade data released on Tuesday showed that imports of goods into the US fell by $11.5bn (£8.6bn) in June, to $264.2bn, after a rise in imports earlier this year as companies tried to beat Donald Trump's tariffs. This narrowed the US trade deficit to $86.0bn in June, down from $96.4bn in May.

Trump's attempts at damage control on Epstein are just making things worse
Trump's attempts at damage control on Epstein are just making things worse

The Guardian

time3 hours ago

  • The Guardian

Trump's attempts at damage control on Epstein are just making things worse

Donald Trump's evident panic over his intimate relationship with Jeffrey Epstein is a case study in damage control gone haywire. If he is trying to keep a scandal clandestine, Trump has instead shined a klieg light on it. His changeable diversions constantly call attention to what he wishes to remain hidden. His prevarications, projections and protests have scrambled his allies and set them against each other. His inability to remain silent on the subject makes him appear as twitchy as a suspect in the glare of a third-degree police interrogation. The supine Republican Congress abruptly adjourned for the summer to flee the incessant demands for the release of files in the possession of the Department of Justice. But three Republicans broke to vote with Democrats on the House oversight committee to demand the Epstein files. The speaker, Mike Johnson, abandoning his assigned role as a Trump echo chamber, blurted, 'This is not a hoax,' directly contradicting Trump. Johnson's plain statement prompted widespread jaw dropping. With every rattled excuse, Trump throws his administration into further chaos. His cabinet members are pitted against each other – the attorney general, Pam Bondi, versus the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, a pair of scorpions in a bottle. Trump has succeeded in driving Bondi from her regular perch on Fox News, as his reliable apologist, into virtual seclusion. She has reportedly engaged in a screaming match with the deputy director of the FBI, Dan Bongino, a former far-right talkshow jock who made his bones parroting that the Epstein files held the secrets of a vast conspiracy to blackmail deep state actors. After she issued a statement that there was no such 'client list', he apparently sulked at home, declining to come into the office, upset that his reputation was being sullied with his former Maga listeners. Bondi accused him of leaking unfavorable stories to the media that blamed her for the Maga backlash against her announcement. The manosphere bigmouth, sensitive about his hurt feelings, was in a tizzy, oh dear. 'No, no, she's given us just a very quick briefing,' Trump said on 15 July about whether Bondi had told him his name was in the files. 'I would say that, you know, these files were made up by [the former FBI director James] Comey, they were made up by [Barack] Obama, they were made up by the Biden administration.' The next day he posted on Truth Social that 'Radical Left Democrats' and 'the Fake News' were behind 'the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax'. A week later, on 23 July, the Wall Street Journal reported that Bondi had briefed Trump in May that his name appeared in the Epstein files. Which also raised the question: what did Elon Musk know and from whom did he know it when he tweeted in June that Trump's name was in the files, a tweet he quickly deleted after he had played arsonist? Did Bondi and the FBI director, Kash Patel, inform him about Trump's presence in the Epstein documents? Where else would he have gotten the idea? Into the death valley of parched alibis stepped Tulsi Gabbard to win Trump's affection with a press conference orchestrated at the White House on the same day the Journal punctured Trump's lie about Bondi briefing him on the Epstein files. Gabbard was there to expose a 'treasonous conspiracy' of Obama administration officials who supposedly plotted to manufacture the 'Russiagate' scandal that Putin sought to help Trump in the 2016 election, which was a fact. Her presentation was a farrago of falsehoods. She conflated Russian interference with false claims that Obama fabricated information about Russian hacking of voting machines and other fairytales. Gabbard also triumphantly unveiled a report that Hillary Clinton was on a 'daily regimen of heavy tranquilizers', which was sheer propaganda concocted by Russian intelligence long debunked as 'objectively false' by the FBI. Gabbard's performance unselfconsciously portrayed herself as a useful idiot for Russian spies. Trump was ecstatic. 'She's, like, hotter than everybody. She's the hottest one in the room right now,' he said. He posted that the Democrats 'are playing another Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax but, this time, under the guise of what we will call the Jeffrey Epstein SCAM'. Bondi was reportedly frustrated with Gabbard. Bondi had been given little warning that Gabbard's work would be dumped in her lap 'for criminal referral', apparently in order to satisfy Trump's appetite for revenge. Bondi had been the catalyst of the 'client list' pseudo-scandal, claiming it was sitting on her desk. Always ready to gratify Trump's whims, she was not prepared to be sideswiped by Gabbard. In the pursuit of Trump's favor, one lackey lapped another. Bondi finessed the situation by appointing a special 'strike force' to examine and undoubtedly dismiss yet again Trump's attempt to blot out the conclusive official reports, from the Mueller report to the report by the Senate intelligence committee, chaired by then senator Marco Rubio, that had documented his campaign's involvement with Russian agents in 2016. Bondi appeared to be seething in announcing the 'strike force', going out of her way to describe Gabbard as 'my friend'. The grueling Trump cabinet dance marathon goes round and round until they drop. To demonstrate Obama's supposed guilt, Trump posted an AI-generated video showing Obama forced to his knees and shackled in chains by federal agents before a seated and smiling Trump in the Oval Office to the soundtrack of the song YMCA. Trump apparently thinks that depicting himself as an enslaver, President Simon Legree, is a positive image that can deflect questions about his sexually predatory behavior and Epstein relationship. 'He's done criminal acts,' said Trump about Obama, and he mused, 'There's no question about it, but he has immunity. He owes me big.' Trump was referring to the supreme court's ruling granting him 'absolute' immunity for 'official acts' that wound up relieving him of prosecution for the January 6 insurrection. As Trump explained it, he was responsible for the decision, at least through justices he had appointed, and Obama was indebted to him over 'crimes' that Trump himself had made up to make the Epstein shadow disappear. Sign up to This Week in Trumpland A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration after newsletter promotion Then, after Trump tried the certain loser of a gambit of requesting the release of the Epstein grand jury material, which would almost certainly contain nothing new and was inevitably denied by the judge, he turned to another tactic. Suddenly, the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, who had been Trump's personal attorney in the Stormy Daniels hush-money trial, in which Trump was convicted of 34 felonies, was sent racing to Tallahassee to interview Epstein's imprisoned co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell. No mere professional prosecutor would do for this high-level mission. Instead, in an unprecedented move, the deputy attorney general would conduct the interrogation. The case, in fact, was closed after Maxwell's indictment for perjury, conviction for sex-trafficking minors and 20-year sentence. Yet Blanche stated, sloppily misspelling her first name in his haste, 'If Ghislane Maxwell has information about anyone who has committed crimes against victims, the FBI and the DOJ will hear what she has to say.' He said that Maxwell can 'finally say what really happened', as if she would perhaps prove the existence of the fictional 'client list' or some version of it to incriminate the enemies it contained, or clear Trump as a gentleman beyond reproach. Blanche's remark seemed to dangle a pardon or clemency. Asked about the possibility, Trump said, 'I'm allowed to do it.' Curiously, on 14 July, the solicitor general, D John Sauer, who was Trump's lawyer in the presidential immunity case before the US court of appeals, had filed a brief to the supreme court opposing relief that Maxwell had requested. 'From about 1994 to 2004, petitioner 'coordinated, facilitated, and contributed to' the multimillionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein's sexual abuse of numerous young women and underage girls,' Sauer wrote. She could not be exempt from her conviction on the basis of Epstein's first trial agreement as she claimed; she had been fairly tried, convicted and the matter was closed. But the acceleration of the Epstein backlash apparently flipped the administration's position. Now, Blanche gave Maxwell a grant of limited immunity. Her attorney, David O Markus, was a good friend of Blanche's. In the Stormy Daniels hush-money case, he had offered Blanche the advice that he should impeach Michael Cohen, Trump's former personal attorney, as a witness against him, by characterizing him as 'GLOAT' –the 'Greatest Liar of All Time'. In 2024, Blanche appeared twice on Markus's little-watched podcast. 'I consider you a friend,' said Blanche. Blanche asked Maxwell over two days about 100 people, according to Markus. Who those people might be, what she was asked and what she said remain unknown. One wonders, for example, if Blanche inquired about her knowledge of Trump's adventures in the dressing rooms of underaged models and beyond. One prominent model agent, quoted in a 2023 story in Variety, 'Inside the Fashion World's Dark Underbelly of Sexual and Financial Exploitation: 'Modeling Agencies Are Like Pimps for Rich People,'' said that Trump was 'certainly' a 'fixture'. 'I would see Donald Trump backstage at [Fashion Week home] Bryant Park, and I'm like, 'Why is he standing there when there's a 13-year-old changing?' In 1992, Trump got George Houraney, a Florida businessman, to sponsor a 'calendar girl' competition with 28 young models who were flown to Mar-a-Lago. But there were reportedly only two guests. 'It was him and Epstein,' Houraney said to the New York Times. 'I said, 'Donald, this is supposed to be a party with VIPs. You're telling me it's you and Epstein?'' One of those models, Karen Mulder, who had appeared on the cover of Vogue the year before and was considered among the most elite supermodels, described her experience with Trump and Epstein as 'disgusting', according to the Miami Herald. A year later, in 1993, Epstein brought a Sport Illustrated swimsuit model, Stacey Williams, to Trump Tower. She had met the future president at a Christmas party in 1992. 'It became very clear then that he and Donald were really, really good friends and spent a lot of time together,' Williams told the Guardian. 'The second he was in front of me,' she recounted to CNN in 2024, 'he pulled me into him, and his hands were just on me and didn't come off. And then the hands started moving, and they were on the, you know, on the side of my breasts, on my hips, back down to my butt, back up, sort of then, you know – they were just on me the whole time. And I froze. I couldn't understand what was going on.' While Trump groped her, he kept talking to Epstein, and they were 'looking at each other and smiling'. Markus said: 'We haven't spoken to the president or anybody about a pardon just yet.' Still, he added: 'The president this morning said he had the power to do so. We hope he exercises that power in the right and just way.' The House oversight committee has subpoenaed Maxwell for a deposition on 11 August, but she has not decided yet whether to cooperate, her lawyer said. While Blanche hurried back to Washington, Trump appeared to have depleted his armory of conspiracy theories, at least for the moment. He tried a novel tack, his most audacious projection yet. 'I'm not focused on conspiracy theories that you are,' he admonished the White House press corps. Then he made a remark that he had never made before, something contrary to his entire character, which underscored the depth of his anxiety. 'Don't,' he said, 'talk about Trump.' But Trump quickly recovered from the tension of his momentary reticence, and on the evening of 26 July, from Scotland, where he was touring his golf courses, he posted that Beyoncé, Oprah Winfrey and Al Sharpton should be prosecuted for their endorsement of Kamala Harris in exchange for payments of millions of dollars. 'They should all be prosecuted!' he demanded. Though a bogus accusation, it accurately reflected Trump's crudely transactional worldview. A few hours later, in the early morning of Sunday 27 July, he posted a Fox News clip of the rightwing talker Mark Levin, writing in capital letters: 'THIS IS A MASSIVE OBAMA SCANDAL!' Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth. He is a Guardian US columnist and co-host of The Court of History podcast

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