US: Trump administration releases new JFK assassination records

United States President Donald Trump-led administration on Tuesday released thousands of previously classified records related to the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy. 

The newly unveiled documents include pages that had been partially redacted in earlier releases.

While many JFK assassination files had already been made public, including a batch of 13,000 documents during the Biden administration, the latest release contains additional material that had not been fully accessible.

Trump said on Monday that “people have been waiting for decades” to see the 80,000 pages of records related to Kennedy’s assassination. Soon after assuming office, he signed an executive order for the public release of thousands of documents tied to the assassinations of Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr.

The National Archives published the documents on its website Tuesday evening. Researchers now face the task of reviewing 1,123 newly posted files, which have been listed only by record numbers without accompanying descriptions.

Despite the volume of material, some experts believe major revelations are unlikely. Tom Samoluk, a former deputy director of the Assassination Records Review Board, said much of the content echoes what has already been seen.

“The collection of records that we reviewed, the vast majority of which were released — some were kept classified in whole or in part — if that’s what we’re talking about, then there is no smoking gun,” he told CNN in a phone interview.

“If there had been anything that cut to the core of the assassination, the Review Board would have released it in the mid-’90s. So there is a sense of what the records are,” he went on.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said in a statement that the records contain “approximately 80,000 pages of previously classified records that will be published with no redactions.”

She noted that some documents remain under court seal grand jury secrecy, or are subject to restrictions under the Internal Revenue Code and would need to be unsealed before release. Gabbard added that the National Archives is working with the Justice Department to speed up that process.

Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia and author of The Kennedy Half-Century: The Presidency, Assassination, and Lasting Legacy of John F. Kennedy, cautioned that the release might not meet public expectations.

“I’m just telling you that we will learn things,” Sabato said. “But it may not be about the Kennedy assassination and people who are expecting, you know, to crack the case after 61 years, are going to be bitterly disappointed.”

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Conspiracy theories surrounding Kennedy’s death have persisted for decades, some of which Trump has echoed publicly. The Assassination Records Review Board, in which Samoluk served, was established in part to determine the potential for further transparency in the aftermath of such theories.

Samoluk admitted he hadn’t seen every document that could be released. He referenced a recent FBI discovery of approximately 2,400 new JFK-related records from a fresh search following Trump’s executive order.

He also suggested that other federal agencies may hold undisclosed materials that were not examined by the 1990s panel, potentially contributing to a new trove of unseen information. Among these, documents involving CIA knowledge of Lee Harvey Oswald’s movements before the November 22, 1963, assassination could offer further context.

In 2023, the National Archives announced it had completed its review of the classified documents, stating that 99 percent of the records were now available to the public. Former President Joe Biden later confirmed the release through a memo certifying the archivist’s conclusion and the fulfilment of a previous declassification deadline.

Nonetheless, key agencies including the CIA, Pentagon and State Department have continued to withhold some files. Officials have cited the need to protect the identities of confidential sources and intelligence methods as the basis for maintaining secrecy.

Although Trump refrained from releasing all documents during his first term at the request of national security agencies, he has renewed his pledge on the 2024 campaign trail to make the remaining files public.

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