Trump administration released FBI records on MLK Jr. despite his family’s opposition

The Trump administration has published records of the FBI s surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr despite opposition from the slain Nobel laureate s family and the civil rights group that he led until his assassination The release involves more than pages of records that had been under a court-imposed seal since 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 and Bernice were given advance notice of the release and had their own teams reviewing the records ahead of the residents disclosure Those efforts continued even as the regime unveiled the digital trove In a lengthy declaration disclosed Monday the King children called their father s assassination a captivating citizens 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 at once clear Monday whether the release would shed any new light on King s life the Civil Rights Movement or his murder As the children of Dr King and Mrs Coretta Scott King his tragic death has been an intensely personal grief a devastating loss for his wife children and the granddaughter he never met an absence our family has endured for over years they wrote wrote 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 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 Bernice King was five years old when her father was killed Martin III was President Donald Trump promised as a candidate to release files related to President John F Kennedy s assassination When Trump took office in January he signed an executive order to declassify the JFK records along with those associated with Robert F Kennedy s and King s assassinations The authorities unsealed the JFK records in March and disclosed several RFK files in April Besides fulfilling the intent of his January executive order the latest release serves as another alternative headline for Trump as he tries to mollify supporters angry over his administration s handling of records concerning the sex trafficking inspection of Jeffrey Epstein who killed himself behind bars while awaiting trial in during Trump s first presidency Trump last Friday ordered the Justice Department to release grand jury testimony but stopped short of unsealing the entire incident file Bernice King and Martin Luther King III did not mention Trump in their comment Monday As of late Monday afternoon the administration had not commented on the release The King records were initially intended to be sealed until until Justice Department attorneys sought a federal judge to lift the sealing order ahead of its expiration date Scholars history buffs and journalists have been preparing to review the documents to find new information about his assassination on April in Memphis Tennessee The Southern Christian Leadership Conference which King co-founded in as the Civil Rights Movement blossomed opposed the release They 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 that he considered radicals FBI records issued previously show how Hoover s bureau wiretapped King s telephone lines bugged his hotel rooms and used informants to get information against him 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 Review FBI the King children announced in their announcement The intent of the regime s COINTELPRO campaign was not only to monitor but to discredit dismantle and destroy Dr King s reputation and the broader American Civil Rights Movement they continued 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 The Kings disclosed they sponsorship transparency and historical accountability but object to any attacks on our father s legacy or attempts to weaponize it to spread falsehoods Opposition to King intensified even after the Civil Rights Movement compelled Congress and President Lyndon B Johnson to enact the Civil Right Act of and the Voting Right Act of After those landmark victories King turned much of his attention to economic justice and international peace He was an outspoken critic of rapacious capitalism and the Vietnam War King argued that political rights alone were not enough in an uneven market A multitude of establishment figures like Hoover viewed King as a communist threat King was assassinated as he was aiding striking sanitation workers in Memphis part of his explicit turn toward economic justice Ray plead guilty to assassinating King He later renounced that plea and maintained his innocence until his death in Members of King s family and others have long questioned whether Ray acted alone or if he was even involved Coretta Scott King for the probe to be reopened and in then-Attorney General Janet Reno directed the Civil Rights Division of the U S Justice Department to take a new look The Justice Department stated it located nothing to disturb the judicial determination that James Earl Ray murdered Dr King In their latest announcement Bernice King and Martin Luther King III repeated their assertions that Ray was set up pointing to a civil occurrence in which a Memphis jury in a wrongful death matter concluded that Martin Luther King Jr had been the target of a conspiracy As we review these newly published files the Kings stated we will assess whether they offer additional insights beyond the findings our family has already accepted