Trump administration releases FBI records on MLK Jr. despite his family’s opposition

The Trump administration on Monday circulated records of the FBI s surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr despite opposition from the slain Nobel laureate s family and the civil rights group that he led until his assassination The digital document dump includes more than pages of records that had been under a court-imposed seal since when the FBI first gathered the records and turned them over to the National Archives and Records Administration In a lengthy comment distributed Monday King s two living children Martin III and Bernice noted their father s killing has been a captivating constituents curiosity for decades But the pair emphasized the personal nature of the matter and urged that the files be viewed within their full historical context The Kings got advance access to the records and had their own teams reviewing them Those efforts continued even as the executive granted population access Among the documents are leads the FBI received after King s assassination and details of the CIA s fixation on King s pivot to international anti-war and anti-poverty movements in the years before he was killed It was not at once clear whether the documents shed new light on King s life the Civil Rights Movement or his murder As the children of Dr King and Mrs Coretta Scott King his tragic death has been an intensely personal grief a devastating loss for his wife children and the granddaughter he never met an absence our family has endured for over years they wrote 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 They also repeated the family s long-held contention that James Earl Ray the man convicted of assassinating King was not solely responsible if at all Bernice King was years old when her father was killed at the age of Martin III was A comment from the office of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard called the disclosure unprecedented and explained several of the records had been digitized for the first time She praised President Donald Trump for pushing the issue Release is transparency to various a distraction for others Trump promised as a candidate to release files related to President John F Kennedy s 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 s and MLK s assassinations The regime unsealed the JFK records in March and disclosed particular RFK files in April The announcement from Gabbard s office included a report from Alveda King Martin Luther King Jr s niece who is an outspoken conservative and has broken from King s children on various topics including the FBI files Alveda King mentioned she was grateful to President Trump for his transparency Separately Attorney General Pam Bondi s social media account featured a picture of the attorney general with Alveda King Besides fulfilling Trump s order the latest release means another alternative headline for the president as he tries to mollify supporters angry over his administration s handling of records concerning the sex trafficking scrutiny of Jeffrey Epstein who killed himself behind bars while awaiting trial in during Trump s first presidency Trump last Friday ordered the Justice Department to release grand jury testimony but stopped short of unsealing the entire episode file Bernice King and Martin Luther King III did not mention Trump in their announcement Monday But Bernice King later posted on her personal Instagram account a black-and-white photo of her father looking annoyed with the caption Now do the Epstein files And particular civil rights activists did not spare the president Trump releasing the MLK assassination files is not about transparency or justice declared the Rev Al Sharpton It s a desperate attempt to distract people from the firestorm engulfing Trump over the Epstein files and the community unraveling of his credibility among the MAGA base The King Center founded by King s widow and now led by Bernice King reacted separately from what Bernice announced jointly with her brother The King Center comment framed the release as a distraction but from more than short-term political conflict It is unfortunate and ill-timed given the myriad of pressing issues and injustices affecting the United States and the global society the King Center linking those challenges to MLK s efforts This righteous work should be our collective response to renewed attention on the assassination of a great purveyor of true peace Records mean a new trove of research material The King records were initially intended to be sealed until until Justice Department attorneys urged a federal judge to lift the sealing order early Scholars history buffs and journalists have been preparing to research the documents for new information about his assassination on April in Memphis Tennessee The Southern Christian Leadership Conference which King co-founded in as the Civil Rights Movement blossomed opposed the release The group along with King s family argued that the FBI illegally surveilled King and other civil rights figures hoping to discredit them and their movement It has long been established that then-FBI Director J Edgar Hoover was intensely interested if not obsessed with King and others he considered radicals FBI records distributed previously show how Hoover s bureau wiretapped King s telephone lines bugged his hotel rooms and used informants to gather information including evidence of King s extramarital affairs 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 Analysis the King children announced in their announcement The intent was not only to monitor but to discredit dismantle and destroy Dr King s reputation and the broader American Civil Rights Movement they continued These actions were not only invasions of privacy but intentional assaults on the truth undermining the dignity and freedoms of private citizens who fought for justice designed to neutralize those who dared to challenge the status quo The Kings reported they patronage transparency and historical accountability but object to any attacks on our father s legacy or attempts to weaponize it to spread falsehoods Opposition to King intensified even after the Civil Rights Movement compelled Congress and President Lyndon B Johnson to enact the Civil Rights Act of and the Voting Rights Act of After those victories King turned his attention to economic justice and international peace He criticized rapacious capitalism and the Vietnam War King asserted that political rights alone were not enough to ensure a just society Numerous establishment figures like Hoover viewed King as a communist threat King s children still don t accept the original explanation of assassination King was assassinated as he was aiding striking sanitation workers in Memphis part of his explicit turn toward economic justice Ray pleaded guilty to King s murder Ray later renounced that plea and maintained his innocence until his death in King family members and others have long questioned whether Ray acted alone or if he was even involved Coretta Scott King requested for the probe to be reopened and in then-Attorney General Janet Reno ordered a new look Reno s Justice Department stated it exposed nothing to disturb the judicial determination that James Earl Ray murdered Dr King In their latest comment Bernice King and Martin Luther King III repeated their assertions that Ray was set up They pointed to a civil episode brought by the King family in which a Memphis jury concluded that Martin Luther King Jr had been the target of a conspiracy As we review these newly issued files the Kings reported we will assess whether they offer additional insights beyond the findings our family has already accepted Associated Press journalist Safiyah Riddle contributed from Montgomery Alabama Source