The Trump administration has released approximately 200,000 pages of FBI surveillance records on Martin Luther King Jr, overruling objections from the slain civil rights leader’s family and the organisation he led. The documents, which had been under a court-imposed seal since 1977, were posted on a government website amid ongoing calls for the president to release files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
King’s two surviving children, Martin Luther King III and Dr Bernice A King, were given advance notice and had their own teams review the records before public disclosure. In a joint statement, they urged the public to engage with the documents “with empathy, restraint, and respect for our family’s continuing grief”. They repeated the family’s long-held belief that James Earl Ray, the man convicted of assassinating King, was not solely responsible, if at all, and that a conspiracy involving government agencies was likely.
The family condemned the COINTELPRO campaign by the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover, describing it as an “invasive, predatory, and deeply disturbing disinformation and surveillance campaign” aimed at discrediting and destroying Dr King’s reputation and the civil rights movement. They warned against any attempts to misuse the documents to undermine King’s legacy.
However, some civil rights activists criticised the release. The Rev Al Sharpton called it “a desperate attempt to distract people from the firestorm engulfing Trump over the Epstein files”. The King Center, founded by King’s widow and now led by Bernice King, described the timing as “unfortunate and ill-timed” given pressing social justice issues.
The release comes after President Trump signed an executive order in January to declassify records related to the assassinations of John F Kennedy, Robert F Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr. The JFK files were unsealed in March, and some RFK files were disclosed in April. The King records were originally scheduled to remain sealed until 2027, but justice department attorneys successfully petitioned a federal judge to lift the seal.
