Trump admin releases MLK's files despite family objection

Despite protests from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s family and the civil 
rights group he once led, the Trump administration has made public records 
of the FBI's surveillance of the slain civil rights icon.

Why it matters: The move pits President Trump's determination to release 
documents the government has kept secret for more than a half-century 
against the family's lingering pain over how J. Edgar Hoover's FBI spied 
on King and tried to intimidate and humiliate him.

It comes amid growing calls for Trump to release the Epstein files after 
his administration concluded that there is no evidence to suggest the 
disgraced financier was murdered or kept a "client list."
King's surviving daughter, Bernice King, referenced this in a post to X 
late Monday of a photo of her father with the comment: "Now, do the 
Epstein files."
Driving the news: Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard 
released on Monday over 230,000 pages of documents related to the 1968 
assassination of MLK, the agency announced.

In January, Trump ordered the release of all records the U.S. government 
still holds about King's assassination, as well as the assassinations of 
President Kennedy (1963) and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (1968).
The newly released MLK files had never been digitized and had spent 
decades "gathering dust in federal archives," the agency said.
Zoom in: The documents detail the FBI's investigation into MLK's 
assassination — including case leads, internal memos tracking progress, 
and records about James Earl Ray's former cellmate, who claimed Ray spoke 
of a possible assassination plot.

The release also includes evidence from a Canadian police department, and 
never-before-seen CIA records that outline overseas intelligence on the 
international hunt for Ray, the prime suspect in the assassination.
What they're saying: "The American people deserve answers decades after 
the horrific assassination of one of our nation's great leaders," Attorney 
General Pam Bondi said after the release.

"The Department of Justice is proud to partner with Director Gabbard and 
the ODNI at President Trump's direction for this latest disclosure."
The new documents will be uploaded alongside the previously released files 
at archives.gov/mlk to ensure all MLK assassination documents can be found 
in a centralized location, the ODNI said.
Yes, but: King's two surviving adult children, in a statement, asked that 
"those who engage with the release of these files to do so with empathy, 
restraint, and respect for our family's continuing grief."

Martin Luther King III and Bernice A. King had wanted an "advanced 
viewing" of the documents, and the ODNI said members of the King family 
were provided an opportunity to review the files two weeks before the 
release.
"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 Kings said.
"While we support transparency and historical accountability, we object to 
any attacks on our father's legacy or attempts to weaponize it to spread 
falsehoods."
Flashback: King's assassination at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis has long 
fueled conspiracy theories about potential government involvement, 
especially because of the FBI's hostility toward him.

In 1969, Ray, a career criminal, pleaded guilty to shooting King but later 
recanted his confession, saying he was part of a larger conspiracy.
Allegations of government complicity have persisted for decades, with 
civil rights leaders, investigative authors and Ray's attorneys citing the 
FBI, Memphis police, and Missouri State Penitentiary — from which Ray 
escaped a year before the killing — as potential conspirators.
Between the lines: The promise of complete disclosure alarmed the King 
family, who were hurt in 2019 by the release of FBI files that alleged 
sordid details about King's sex life, a family friend said.

King's pursuit of civil rights through nonviolence is his enduring legacy. 
But as his work unfolded in the 1960s, Hoover and others in the U.S. 
government sought to prevent the rise of what they feared would be a Black 
"messiah" who could unify African Americans.

Congress formally recognized King's iconic status by approving a federal 
holiday in his honor more than 15 years after he was killed in Memphis.
In the following decades, his legacy drew bipartisan admiration. More 
recently, however, far-right commentators such as Charlie Kirk, a Trump 
ally, began criticizing King.

https://www.axios.com/2025/07/21/martin-luther-king-jr-files-fbi-trump