Here’s What Trump Has Said About Unreleased JFK Assassination Records

On By Littum

Upper line

President-elect Donald Trump said during his presidential campaign that he intends to release the remaining government-archived, once-classified records of the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, despite delaying their release after making a similar promise in his first presidency.

Key facts

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., now nominated to serve in Trump’s cabinet, lost his independent presidential bid and endorsed Trump in Augustafter which Trump said during a rally in Arizona that he would start a commission to study assassination attempts and order it to show all final records of JFK’s assassination, as a “tribute” to nephew Kennedy Jr.

Almost all (99%) of them millions of archival material related to investigations into the assassination are available, but thousands remain classified or partially redacted, and Kennedy Jr. has petitioned for their release – he also tweeted a JFK quote on Friday, the 61st anniversary of the assassination, wrote “the very word ‘secrecy’ is repugnant in a free and open society,” along with a black-and-white photo of the two Kennedys, though it’s unclear if he was referring to the documents.

Trump first promised to release the complete archives during his first presidency, writing on X, formerly Twitter, in 2017 that he wanted “great transparency” and hoped “to get almost everything published” — he later delayed a full release citing national security concerns in a White House memo.

Trump also spoke about the unreleased files in podcast interviews during the 2024 presidential campaign, saying he planned to open the files “immediately” if elected.

In his October interview with comedian Joe Rogan, Trump said he was met with concern “from good people” like former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo about the documents and agreed to delay their release to protect people who “worked for the government” or were “on some way involved in it,” though he thinks “it will be perfectly fine to open up” the rest.

In an episode with “All In” podcast in June Trump said he has “an idea” what the remaining records say, adding that the CIA did not ask for the delay but that the intelligence service was “probably behind” the request and “probably” would have preferred he not release remaining information.

Key background

President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas 61 years ago, amid a tense geopolitical landscape. JFK’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was shot while in police custody shortly after being captured, preventing an explanation for the assassination. In response, President Lyndon B. Johnson created the Warren Commission in 1964 to investigate, which found that there was no broader conspiracy surrounding the assassination. Yet this confluence of factors spawned dozens of speculative theories. People like Rogan, interested in conspiracies and often distrustful of the government, have called for the release of the remaining files, believing they would provide further clarity.

What is left to be released?

More than 3,000 records remain unpublished or have been redacted, with information such as names or addresses blacked out, according to Associated Press. That’s because the materials from the Warren Commission and other relevant government proceedings were moved to a comprehensive collection within the National Archives And the Records Administration through the 1992 President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act. Under the law, more than five million records were compiled and legally released — except for information that poses a risk to national security — in 2017. In 2022, Politico reportedciting FOIA requests that intra-bureaucratic battles have kept these files redacted, and many of these redactions are in place to protect the lives of informants to the investigation. Trump did make around 50,000 availableand President Joe Biden released around 15,000 files but also pushed back the release deadline twice as president. “As I have reiterated throughout my presidency, I fully support the law’s goal of maximizing transparency by disclosing all information in records relating to the assassination,” Biden said in a final White House memo in 2023.

What have Jfk files revealed?

Experts largely say that the latest released record has not contained any revealing information, viz It was reported by the Associated Press. But some releases have contained mysterious information, such as the name of a CIA agent who followed assassin Oswald’s mail, according to the New York Timeswith reference to expert interviews. That name, for example, is somewhat insightful, but useless since the person has been dead for decades. However, the release indicates that intelligence agencies worked to prevent this information from reaching the public, Jefferson Morley, a writer and editor behind Substack called JFK Factstold the New York Times.