Judge Considers Early Release of Martin Luther King Jr. Assassination Documents
A federal judge in Washington said on Wednesday that he was open to lifting a court order ahead of schedule to release potentially sensitive documents related to the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., nodding to an executive order President Trump signed in January aimed at achieving that outcome.
During a hearing on Wednesday to discuss the possibility, Judge Richard Leon of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia nonetheless cautioned that he intended to proceed slowly and prioritize privacy in an extended process to determine whether any documents should be released before 2027, the date that another judge set in 1977 for the documents to be unsealed.
Judge Leon said he would start by ordering the National Archives to show him — and him alone — an inventory of all the sealed materials related to Dr. King that have been stored there.
He said that the inventory, which the government says it has not reviewed, might help shed light on whether documents specifically related to Dr. King's assassination in 1968, and the investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation that followed, had been separated out and could be efficiently processed.
The hearing on Wednesday came through a lawsuit brought by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the civil rights organization based in Atlanta associated with Dr. King, which has sued to halt any effort to unseal documents early.
It came in response to an executive order Mr. Trump signed in January that directed intelligence agencies to set in motion plans to release records related to the assassinations of Dr. King, President John F. Kennedy and Senator Robert F. Kennedy.
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