Trump administration releases long-sealed FBI files on Martin Luther King Jr

The Trump administration has released records of the FBI’s surveillance activities on Martin Luther King Jr., despite opposition from the family of the slain leader and the civil rights group he led until his assassination in 1968.

The released records include more than 240,000 pages that had been sealed by court order since 1977, when the FBI first collected the records and delivered them to the National Archives and Records Administration.

King’s family, including his two surviving children, Martin III, 67, and Bernice, 62, were notified in advance of the records’ release and reviewed them with their own teams before the public disclosure. These efforts continued as the government made the digital archives public.

In a lengthy statement released Monday, King’s children described their father’s assassination as a “matter of public interest for decades.” However, the pair stressed the personal nature of the issue, emphasizing that “these files must be considered in their full historical context.”

“As the children of Dr. King and Mrs. Coretta Scott King, his tragic death is a very personal pain for us; a devastating loss for his wife, children, and the grandchild he never met, an absence our family has endured for over 57 years,” the children wrote.

Martin III and Bernice requested that those involved in the release of the files “act with empathy, restraint, and respect for our family’s ongoing grief.”

They also reiterated the family’s long-held assertion that James Earl Ray, who was convicted of King’s assassination, was not the sole person responsible, if at all.

Bernice King was five years old when her father was killed. Martin III was 10.

A statement from the office of the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, described the release as “unprecedented” and said that many of the records were digitized for the first time to make it possible. Gabbard praised President Donald Trump for his efforts to release this information.

As a presidential candidate, Trump had promised to release the files related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. When Trump took office in January, he signed a presidential executive order to declassify the records related to the 1968 assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and King, in addition to the JFK records.

Bernice King and Martin Luther King III did not mention Trump in their statement on Monday.

King’s records were set to remain sealed until 2027, until Department of Justice lawyers asked a federal judge to lift the sealing order before its expiration.

Academics, history enthusiasts, and journalists were preparing to examine the documents to find new information about the assassination of King, who was murdered on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee.

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which King co-founded in 1957 with the growth of the Civil Rights Movement, opposed the release of the documents.

Along with King’s family, they alleged that the FBI illegally surveilled King and other civil rights figures, wiretapping their offices and phone lines in an effort to discredit them and their movement.

It has long been known that then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had an “intense, if not obsessive, interest” in King and others he deemed radicals.

Previously released FBI records show that Hoover’s bureau wiretapped King’s phone lines, placed listening devices in his hotel rooms, and used informants to gather information against him.

“He was the ruthless target of an aggressive, predatory, and deeply disturbing campaign of disinformation and surveillance orchestrated by J. Edgar Hoover through the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI),” King’s children said in their statement.

The King family stated that they “support transparency and historical accountability” but are “opposed to any attack on our father’s legacy or attempts to use it as a weapon to spread falsehoods.”