Trump Releases MLK Jr. Files Despite Family's Objection

The Trump administration released records of the FBI's surveillance of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on Monday, despite opposition from the slain Nobel laureate's family and the civil rights group that he led until his 1968 assassination. The release involves more than 240,000 pages of records that had been under a court-imposed seal since 1977, when the FBI first gathered the records and turned them over to the National Archives and Records Administration.

• King's family, including his two living children, Martin III, 67, and Bernice, 62, were given advance notice of the release and had their own teams reviewing the records ahead of the public disclosure, the AP reports. Those efforts continued even as the government unveiled the digital trove.

• In a lengthy statement released Monday, the King children called their father's assassination a "captivating public curiosity for decades." But the pair emphasized the personal nature of the matter and urged that "these files must be viewed within their full historical context."
• It was not immediately clear Monday whether the release would shed any new light on King's life, the Civil Rights Movement, or his murder.
• "We ask those who engage with the release of these files to do so with empathy, restraint, and respect for our family's continuing grief," King's children wrote. They also repeated the family's long-held contention that James Earl Ray, the man convicted of assassinating King, was not solely responsible, if at all.

• The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which King co-founded in 1957 as the Civil Rights Movement blossomed, opposed the release. The organization, along with King's family, argued that the FBI illegally surveilled King and other civil rights figures, tapping their offices and phone lines with the aim of discrediting them and their movement.
• It has long been established that then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was intensely interested if not obsessed with King and others he considered radicals. FBI records released previously show how Hoover's bureau wiretapped King's telephone lines, bugged his hotel rooms, and used informants to get information against him. King's children said he was "relentlessly targeted by an invasive, predatory, and deeply disturbing disinformation and surveillance campaign."
• The files contain "details about the FBI's investigation into the assassination of MLK, discussion of potential leads, internal FBI memos detailing the progress of the case, information about James Earl Ray's former cellmate who stated he discussed with Ray an alleged assassination plot, and more," Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said in a post on X.
• The files were released under a January executive order from President Trump that also called for the release of files related to the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy. The Washington Post notes that the release comes as Trump "faces furor from some of his supporters" over his administration's handling of files related to the Jeffrey Epstein case.