MLK files related to assassination released after Trump order; King family objects

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President Donald Trump's administration on Monday released a trove of records surrounding the 1968 assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., a move made despite objections from some of the civil rights icon’s family.

Over 240,000 pages of records have been made available on the website of the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. The Washington, D.C.-based agency says the release is in response to an executive order from Trump’s White House dating back to January.

King’s family objected to the release, saying the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s surveillance of the progressive leader was tainted by the agency’s political bent at the time.

"We recognize that the release of documents concerning the assassination of our father, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., has long been a subject of interest, captivating public curiosity for decades," the family said in a statement. But "the release of these files must be viewed within their full historical context. During our father’s lifetime, he was relentlessly targeted by an invasive, predatory, and deeply disturbing disinformation and surveillance campaign orchestrated by J. Edgar Hoover through the Federal Bureau of Investigation."

Hoover’s goal, the family says, was to find dirt on MLK in order to discredit him and the civil rights movement.

Documents related to the King assassination are the latest trove of materials to be made public through Executive Order 14176. The Jan. 23, 2025 order also called for the release of materials related to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy. Files related to the JFK assassination were released in March.

The full findings of the government investigations into the three killings have been hidden for decades, sparking wide-ranging speculation and preventing a sense of closure for many Americans. All three men were national and international icons whose assassinations — and the theories swirling around them — became the stuff of books, movies, controversy, and the pages of history itself.

Trump’s move to declassify the materials related to MLK also comes amid a political firestorm in Washington over the release of files related to Jeffrey Epstein, the former financier and convicted sex offender who died while awaiting trial in 2019. 

Why some in the King family oppose releasing the FBI files

The children of King and Coretta Scott King are asking people reading the MLK files to do so with respect for the family’s grief. They also hope readers understand the FBI files were produced under the agency's COINTELPRO program, according to the family.

COINTELPRO was an FBI counterintelligence program aimed at discrediting political organizations, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica. In addition to King, the program targeted the Black Panther Party, Communist Party, Ku Klux Klan and Puerto Rican Nationalist Party, the encyclopedia says.

A 1975 U.S. Senate investigation slammed the program's tactics. 

"Many of the techniques used would be intolerable in a democratic society even if all of the targets had been involved in violent activity, but COINTELPRO went far beyond that," the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities said in its final report. "The Bureau conducted a sophisticated vigilante operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of First Amendment rights of speech and association."

In the case of the civil rights icon, King’s family said COINTELPRO’s activities "were not only invasions of privacy, but intentional assaults on the truth."

The family members say they support transparency and accountability, but they also fear that the FBI investigation documents of that era might be weaponized.

"We strongly condemn any attempts to misuse these documents in ways intended to undermine our father’s legacy and the significant achievements of the movement," the family said. "Those who promote the fruit of the FBI’s surveillance will unknowingly align themselves with an ongoing campaign to degrade our father and the Civil Rights Movement."

'A desperate attempt to distract people,' says Rev. Al Sharpton

Others have taken issue with the timing of the release of the MLK files. The Trump administration has been under pressure in recent weeks over its handling of the Epstein investigation files.

Trump on the campaign trail promised to release records related to Epstein and Attorney General Pam Bondi said earlier in the year that she had a supposed Epstein client list "sitting on my desk right now to review."

But the Justice Department said in July no such document exists and that investigators found no evidence to charge others in the case. 

A few Trump allies have taken issue with the administration’s failure to produce anything of substance related to Epstein. Some critics say the MLK files release serves as a distraction from the Epstein fallout. 

"We need to be crystal clear on the fact that Trump releasing the MLK assassination files is not about transparency or justice," said the Rev. Al Sharpton. "It's a desperate attempt to distract people from the firestorm engulfing Trump over the Epstein files and the public unraveling of his credibility among the MAGA base."

Bernice King, the CEO of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, posted a picture on social media of her father with a nonplussed expression and a caption reading, "Now, do the Epstein files."

What do the King files say?

The National Archives released nearly a quarter million pages of records related to the MLK assassination. The records come from the FBI’s investigation of the King assassination, records the Central Intelligence Agency deemed related to the assassination and a file from the State Department on the extradition of James Earl Ray, who pleaded guilty in 1969 to murdering King.

Archives officials said the agency was working with other federal partners to uncover records related to the King assassination and that records will be added to the website on a rolling basis. 

The records were released at about 3:30 p.m. on July 21 and it’s unclear yet what revelations they might contain. Historians are still sifting through the over 75,000 pages of records released in March related to the JFK assassination. 

So far, nothing in the documents has changed the long-held findings that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in assassinating Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963 while the then-president rode in a motorcade in Dallas.

MLK assassinated in Memphis, April 4, 1968

King, whose work furthering the Civil Rights Movement is honored with a federal holiday, was killed on the balcony outside his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee.

The Atlanta preacher was visiting the city to march alongside striking workers. On the evening of the assassination, he was preparing to leave for dinner at the home of a local minister. 

He stepped outside to speak with colleagues in the parking lot below and was shot in the face by an assassin. James Earl Ray, a 40-year-old escaped fugitive, later confessed to the crime and was sentenced to a 99-year prison term.

But Ray later tried to withdraw his confession and said he was set up by a man named Raoul. He maintained until his death in 1998 that he did not kill King.

A Memphis tavern owner and a former FBI agent both also claimed a figure named Raoul was behind the killing, according to the Department of Justice.

Loyd Jowers, a former Memphis tavern owner, claimed 25 years after the murder that he participated in a mafia-linked conspiracy to kill King. Jowers also linked Memphis police and Raoul to the assassination, the Justice Department said.

Donald Wilson, a former FBI agent, also claimed in 1998 that after King’s assassination he found some papers in Ray’s car that mentioned Raoul as well as figures linked to the Kennedy assassination. Wilson said the papers were stolen from him by someone who later worked in the White House, according to the Justice Department.

The family doesn’t believe Ray was the shooter and said that they support the findings of a 1999 wrongful death lawsuit that found that King was the victim of a broad conspiracy that involved government agents.

Department of Justice officials maintain that the findings of the civil lawsuit are not credible.

Read the MLK files

Looking to read the MLK files yourself? You can find them on the National Archives' website here.

Most of the files are scans of documents, and some are blurred or have become faint or difficult to read in the decades since King’s assassination. There are also photographs and sound recordings.

Contributing Josh Meyer