The Trump administration has released more than 200,000 pages of records from the FBI’s surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr., despite opposition from the civil rights leader’s family.
The records have been under a court seal since 1977 after the FBI turned them over to the National Archives and Records Administration. The King family were given advance notice of the release and had their own teams reviewing the records ahead of the public disclosure, according to an Associated Press report.
It’s unclear if the newly-released records will shed any new light on the assassination of King.
King’s two children, Bernice A. King and Martin Luther King III, released a lengthy statement urging “those who engage with the release of these files to do so with empathy, restraint, and respect for our family’s continuing grief.”
The statement read in part:
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 (FBI). The intent of the government’s COINTELPRO [counterintelligence program] campaign was not only to monitor, but to discredit, dismantle and destroy Dr. King’s reputation and the broader American Civil Rights Movement. These actions were not only invasions of privacy, but intentional assaults on the truth – undermining the dignity and freedoms of private citizens who fought for justice, designed to neutralize those who dared to challenge the status quo.
Members of the family have long believed that King’s assassination was a conspiracy that included government agencies and that James Earl Ray, convicted of shooting King in Memphis in 1968, was a scapegoat. Ray later renounced his guilty plea. In a 1998 civil trial, the jury agreed with the King family.
“As we review these newly released files, we will assess whether they offer additional insights beyond the findings our family has already accepted,” the statement from the King family said. “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.”
U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno ordered a new investigation of the King assassination following the civil trial. In 2000, the Department of Justice released a report rejecting a conspiracy and the findings of the Memphis civil court trial.
The King Center in Atlanta released a statement calling the release of the documents “unfortunate and ill-timed, given the myriad of pressing issues and injustices affecting the United States and the global society, to distract from the critical needs and traumatic outcomes resulting from these issues and injustices. “
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said Monday that releasing the files followed through on President Donald Trump’s commitment to release previously classified files regarding the assassinations of King, President John F. Kenney and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.
Civil rights activist Rev. Al Sharpton called the release of the King documents an attempt by the administration to distract from the “firestorm engulfing Trump” concerning the failure to release records and the “client list” of late financier and child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.