Trump Vows to Release Records on Kennedy and King Killings

President Trump ordered the nation’s security agencies on Thursday to develop plans to release all government records related to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Mr. Trump made a similar vow to disclose remaining documents related to the killing of President Kennedy during his first term, but he ultimately agreed to some redactions at the behest of intelligence agencies to protect sensitive information like the names of C.I.A. assets, intelligence gathering methods and partnerships.

Since returning to office, Mr. Trump has said he no longer considers such redactions to be valid and wants everything related to the president’s assassination to be released. He also ordered agencies to develop plans to release papers related to the killings of Senator Kennedy and Dr. King, which were not covered by a previous disclosure law focused on President Kennedy.

“I have now determined that the continued redaction and withholding of information from records pertaining to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy is not consistent with the public interest and the release of these records is long overdue,” Mr. Trump said in an executive order. He added that “I have determined that the release of all records” related to the deaths of Senator Kennedy and Dr. King “is also in the public interest.”

Mr. Trump has long indulged in conspiracy theories about the killing of President Kennedy in November 1963, even alleging that the father of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, one of his Republican primary rivals in 2016, had associated with the assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. Testimony at Mr. Trump’s hush money trial last year revealed how the National Enquirer, which was helping Mr. Trump at the time, had manufactured that allegation using doctored photos to smear Mr. Cruz.

Mr. Trump now has an adviser in Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who likewise subscribes to conspiracy theories about the killing of the president, his uncle, in Dallas. Mr. Kennedy, who endorsed Mr. Trump last year and has now been nominated for health secretary, has said that “there’s overwhelming evidence that the C.I.A. was involved in his murder” and “it’s beyond a reasonable doubt at this point.”

Mr. Kennedy, who was 14 when his father was shot at a Los Angeles hotel in June 1968 and died in a hospital the next day, has similarly questioned the official account of that assassination. He has said that he believes there was a second gunman involved and that the convicted assassin, Sirhan B. Sirhan, was not the one who killed his father.

The younger Mr. Kennedy has raised the subject of releasing assassination papers related to his family repeatedly with people close to Mr. Trump, according to one such person who has listened to him expound on the subject. It was not immediately clear why Mr. Trump added the April 1968 assassination of Dr. King to the disclosure order.

A 1992 law mandated that documents related to the President Kennedy assassination, except those that could do “identifiable harm” to national security that outweighed the value of disclosure, be released within 25 years.

When the deadline arrived in 2017, Mr. Trump released some papers but granted more time to complete the work in deference to the intelligence agencies. In 2023, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. released still more documents and declared it the “final certification” under the law.

Of roughly 320,000 documents reviewed since the law passed, 99 percent have been disclosed, according to the National Archives and Records Administration. But when Mr. Biden made his certification, 2,140 documents remained fully or partially withheld. Another 2,502 documents remained withheld for reasons outside the president’s purview, like court-ordered seals, grand jury secrecy rules, tax privacy limits or restrictions imposed by people who donated papers. A final 42 papers were held back for a mix of reasons.

In his order on Thursday, Mr. Trump directed his attorney general and director of national intelligence to give him a plan within 15 days “for the full and complete release of records relating to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.” He gave those same officials 45 days to come up with a plan “for the full and complete release” of papers related to the killings of Senator Kennedy and Dr. King.

Jonathan Swan contributed reporting.