JFK assassination files to be released Tuesday, Pres. Trump says

DALLAS - Thousands of files about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy are expected to be released on Tuesday, according to President Donald Trump.

Trump on release of JFK files

The president made the announcement after a board meeting at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. on Monday.

What we know:

Pres. Trump says around 80,000 pages of documents, put together by U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, will be released sometime on Tuesday afternoon.

"That's a big announcement. They've been waiting for that for decades," he said. 

When asked if he had read the files Trump simply said he had "heard about them" and that "it's going to be very interesting."

Pres. Trump promised to release the files if he was elected to a second term.

The president signed an executive order on Jan. 23 to release the remaining classified documents surrounding Kennedy's assassination in downtown Dallas. The order also orders the release of documents surrounding the assassinations of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

What we don't know:

The Associated Press reports that a few thousand documents remain to be declassified. Experts do not believe those documents will contain any new, earth-shattering details. 

The contents of the documents are not known, as well as the amount of redaction included in the documents.

Pres. Trump said he instructed his staff not to redact.

John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992

During his first term, President Trump ordered the records be released under the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992.

In 1992, Congress passed the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act. The act ordered the archives to disclose all information collected — some 5 million pages of material — on the assassination within 25 years — barring any exceptions designated by the president.

Trump promised to declassify and release all the documents collected with minimal redactions.

Instead, a few thousand documents were withheld during his first term. In 2018, the president said the remaining documents' potential to cause harm to national security, law enforcement or foreign affairs outweighed the public interest.

Another batch of documents was released in 2021 by President Joe Biden. Documents were also released in 2022 and 2023.

What has already been released?

To date, more than 5 million pages of documents related to the assassination of Kennedy have been released by the national archives.

Some of the documents include memos from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover written hours after Lee Harvey Oswald was killed in Dallas asking the government to release something to convince the public that Oswald killed John F. Kennedy.

It was released two days after the president was assassinated and hours after Oswald was killed by nightclub owner Jack Ruby in the basement of the Dallas police station.

Other documents reveal theories by other government officials surrounding the assassination.

A 1975 deposition by Richard Helms states that President Lyndon B. Johnson believed Kennedy was behind the assassination of the South Vietnamese president a few weeks prior to his assassination and that the shooting was retaliation.

Other documents are reports of strange calls to foreign media outlets, plans to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro and information from the former Soviet Union's intelligence agency, the KGB, that linked Johnson to the assassination.

Others are reports of Oswald's trip to Mexico City to visit the Cuban and Soviet Union embassies there and agreements with the U.S. and Mexican governments for the United States to maintain close surveillance on the embassies.

Dallas, Texas - Nov. 22, 1963

Kennedy was fatally shot in downtown Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, as his motorcade passed in front of the Texas School Book Depository building, where 24-year-old assassin Lee Harvey Oswald had positioned himself from a sniper’s perch on the sixth floor. Two days after Kennedy was killed, nightclub owner Jack Ruby fatally shot Oswald during a jail transfer.

The Warren Commission concluded in 1964 that Oswald acted alone, firing three shots from a window in the depository. Many Americans have questioned this conclusion. In 1978, the House Select Committee on Assassinations ended its own inquiry by finding that Kennedy "was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy."

Five years later, King and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated just months apart.

Donald J. TrumpCrime and Public Safety