Trump administration released FBI records on MLK Jr. despite his family鈥檚 opposition
Jul 21, 2025, 12:46 PM | Updated: 1:04 pm
FILE - President Donald Trump waves as he departs in his motorcade from the Trump International Golf Club, March 1, 2025, in West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
Credit: ASSOCIATED PRESS
(AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) 鈥� The Trump administration has released records of the FBI鈥檚 surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr., despite opposition from the slain Nobel laureate鈥檚 family and the civil rights group that he led until his 1968 assassination.
The release involves an estimated 200,000 pages of records that had been under a court-imposed seal since 1977, when the FBI first gathered the records and turned them over to the National Archives and Records Administration.
King鈥檚 family, including his two living children, Martin III and Bernice, were given advance notice of the release and had their own teams reviewing the records ahead of the public disclosure.
President Donald Trump promised as a candidate to release files related to President John F. Kennedy鈥檚 1963 assassination. When Trump took office in January, he signed an executive order to declassify the JFK records, along with those associated with Robert F. Kennedy鈥檚 and King鈥檚 1968 assassinations.
The government unsealed the JFK records in March and disclosed some RFK files in April.
