Despite the firm demands for the Jeffrey Epstein Files, the Donald Trump administration has gone on to deliver the records on the slain Nobel laureate Martin Luther King Jr instead. The decision came through even though the civil rights activist’s family and the group he led until he was assassinated in 1968 opposed it. Records spanning 230,000 pages of documents had been sealed since 1977, which is when the FBI first put them together and handed them over to the National Archives and Record Administration.
Trump admin’s back their press release with statement by King’s niece while his children oppose the release
According to a Department of Justice press release dated July 21 (US time), the MLK Jr Files’ disclosure was credited to a collaboration between the Justice Department, Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Upon digitising the release of the MLK records, Attorney General Pam Bondi said, “The American people deserve answers decades after the horrific assassination of one of our nation’s great leaders. The Department of Justice is proud to partner with Director Gabbard and the ODNI at President Trump’s direction for this latest disclosure.”
Luther King Jr’s niece, Alveda King, remained grateful to Trump and Bondi for delivering on their pledge of transparency in the release of these documents on the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.” Meanwhile, the slain activist’s children, Martin III, and Bernice, emphasised that even though his killing has been “captivating public curiosity for decades,” the files should be viewed “within their full historical context” and “so with empathy, restraint, and respect for our family’s continuing grief.”
Martin Luther King Jr Files: 10 takeaways
1.Reactions insist on disclosure being a distraction from Epstein Files: Civil rights activist Rev Al Sharpton said, “Trump releasing the MLK assassination files is not about transparency or justice. 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.”
The King Center, founded by King’s widow, and now led by Bernice King, also slammed it as stealing the spotlight from a lot more than the current Epstein political controversy. “It is unfortunate and ill-timed, given the myriad of pressing issues and injustices affecting the United States and the global society,” they said. “This righteous work should be our collective response to renewed attention on the assassination of a great purveyor of true peace.”
2. The King children still don’t stand by the assassination explanation offered by the officials: The family has long held that James Earl Ray, the man convicted of killing King, was not the only one responsible for the assassination. The Nobel laureate was assassinated at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis on April 4, 1968, at the age of 39. The career criminal initially pleaded guilty to King’s murder but eventually renounced his plea and doubled down on his innocence until he died in 1998.
Consequently, the King children have repeatedly questioned if Ray was even involved in their father’s death, raising suspicions of potential government involvement. They still maintain that purview. While they “support transparency and historical accountability,” they “object to any attacks on our father’s legacy or attempts to weaponise it to spread falsehood.”
3. J Edgar Hoover’s prolonged harassment of the King family: The then-FBI director was obsessively consumed by those he considered radicals, including King. Previous FBI records showed that his bureau wiretapped the activist telephone lines. He even bugged his hotel rooms and enlisted informants to gather information, including evidence of Martin Luther King Jr’s extramarital affairs.
“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,” King’s children highlighted in their statement. “…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.”
4. Unlike most of the JFK assassination files, the 2025 disclosure of the MLK files marks the first time they’ve been digitised after “gathering dust in federal archives” for decades.
5. The documents peek into the FBI’s investigation, including case leads and internal memos. Additionally, records even foreground details about James Earl Ray’s former cellmate. He claimed that the career criminal had spoken out about what seemed like a possible assassination plot.
6. Evidence from the Canadian police department and never-before-seen CIA records also shed light on overseas intelligence and how international authorities were also after Ray as he fled the US following King’s assassination.
7. A lone audio file was also released on Monday. It includes part of an interview conducted by law enforcement to question Jerry Ray, one of James Earl Ray’s siblings.
8. Nothing new or revealing in the new documents? Historians have since said they did not find anything of note in the assassination records pushed out by the Trump admin. “I saw nothing that struck me as new,” said David Garrow, the author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning King biography and a book addressing the FBI’s smear campaign against him, after his initial review of the records.
Upon reviewing the documents with his team of researchers, Larry J. Sabato, the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, also noted, “You’ve got to read this carefully and don’t take it at face value.” He added, “I’m skeptical of anything I read from F.B.I. files about M.L.K,” suspecting agents either made up material or inflated it to stay pro-J Edgar Hoover, FBI’s longtime director. “He wanted dirt on MLK and his movements and his associates,” the New York Times quoted Sabato.
9. Alongside the previously released 2019 FBI files that illustrated the alleged claims associated with King’s sex life, the new additions will be uploaded at archives.gov/mlk so that all assassination documents can be tracked down to a centralised location, as per the ODNI. As of July 21, 2025, the archives page holds 6,302 entries.
10. The King records were originally meant to be sealed until 2027. However, DOJ attorneys asked a federal judge to lift the sealing order before the expiration date. The Monday release came with no prior notice. Tapes and transcripts from the surveillance part of the effort to recover incriminating material on King still appear to remain under seal even though summaries and other material have been released previously, according to the NYT.