'Now, do the Epstein files': MLK's daughter knocks Trump over records release
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s daughter called out President Donald Trump after his administration released a trove of records surrounding her iconic father's 1968 assassination.
Roughly 240,000 pages of records were shared this week despite objections from the King family, who have said the FBI's surveillance of the Georgia-born minister, who led the 1963 March on Washington, was motivated by a political bias against civil rights.
"While we support transparency and historical accountability, we object to any attacks on our father’s legacy or attempts to weaponize it to spread falsehoods," the King family said in a July 21 statement.
The documents related to the King assassination are the latest trove of materials made public through a January executive order by the president that also called for the release of materials related to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy.
King's children have also said they wanted a chance to review files before they become public and that the situation is deeply personal to them.
"Now, do the Epstein files," Bernice King, Dr. King's youngest child, said in a July 21 post on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Trump has been under intense pressure in recent weeks from several right-wing figures about the files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Prominent Republicans, including House Speaker Mike Johnson and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, have called on the administration to provide the public with more information.
“What I would say is just release it, let people see," DeSantis said in a July 20 interview with Fox News. But I do think there’s a desire for justice because Jeffrey Epstein and (Ghislaine) Maxwell didn’t just do this amongst themselves. I mean, there were obviously other people involved, and yet no one’s been brought to justice,”
Polling shows 63% of voters disapprove of the administration's handling of the Epstein case after the Department of Justice and the FBI released no new files and concluded that the disgraced financier died by suicide in his jail cell.