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Martin Luther King Jr.
Federal records related to the investigation into the 1968 assassination of the Rev Martin Luther King Jr were released on Monday, following the disclosure in March of tens of thousands of documents about the 1963 assassination of President John F Kennedy. In January, President Donald Trump ordered the release of thousands of classified governmental documents about Kennedy's assassination, while also moving to declassify federal records related to the deaths of New York Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and King more than five decades ago. Trump ordered Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Attorney General Pam Bondi to coordinate with other government officials to review records related to the assassinations of RFK and King, and present a plan to the president for their complete release. Some 10,000 pages of records about the RFK assassination were released April 18. Justice Department attorneys later asked a federal judge to end a sealing order for the records nearly two years
The Trump administration has released 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 1968 assassination. The digital document dump includes more than 240,000 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. In a lengthy statement released Monday, King's two living children, Martin III, 67, and Bernice, 62, said their father's assassination has been a captivating public curiosity for decades. But the pair emphasized the personal nature of the matter, urging that these files must 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 government granted public access. It was not immediately clear Monday whether the document
