President Donald Trump pledged to release government files pertaining to several high-profile assassinations pretty early on after he returned to the White House. Now, after a remark Trump made during a public appearance this week, new files related to the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy are being released to the public, on a seemingly accelerated timeline.
If you're an American old enough to have had a few years of history class, you're probably aware that Kennedy was president of the US from 1961 to 1963, and you're also probably aware that he was the victim of one of the most infamous assassinations in US history. On Nov. 22, 1963, while riding in a motorcade during a trip to Dallas, Kennedy was shot multiple times from afar and later succumbed to his injuries.
Lee Harvey Oswald, a former US Marine Corps member who at one point defected to the Soviet Union, was arrested and charged with the crime. He claimed innocence, but was shot and killed himself before he could make it to trial. An investigation, known as the Warren Commission, later concluded that Oswald had shot Kennedy and had acted alone, though the circumstances surrounding the shooting and Oswald's background have led many to believe that there was a deeper conspiracy. The US Department of Justice has denied any such thing, though as recently as 2023, a Gallup survey found that 65% of Americans still believe the Kennedy assassination involved a conspiracy of some sort.
That all leads us back to today, where Trump has ordered the release of all remaining US government files about the Kennedy investigation. For all the details you need to know about accessing this new information, keep reading, and for more, get all the information you'll need to understand the tariff situation.
Why are new JFK assassination files being released?
Trump signed an executive order in January calling for the "full and complete release of records relating to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy." Supporters of the president have hailed this as a move toward greater government transparency, while critics have dismissed it as a distraction from the rest of a sweeping agenda that has upended normal operations across the federal government.
Most of the government's files about the Kennedy assassination have already been released: Approximately 98% of those pertaining to the Warren Commission were released between 1994 and 1998, with the total inching up to 99% after more were declassified in June 2023.
According to a March 18Â report from ABC News, while government officials had been in the process of reviewing documents for release since January, the process went into overdrive on Monday. Appearing at the Kennedy Center, Trump mentioned that all of the new files on the JFK assassination would be released by Tuesday afternoon, which prompted an all-hands-on-deck push at the Justice Department's National Security Division to get the documents fully reviewed in time to meet that deadline.
Where can I see the new JFK assassination files?
These newly released files are being shared with the public on the website for the US National Archives. If you're interested in sifting through them, you just need to hop on over to this page:Â JFK Assassination Records - 2025 Documents Release.Â
A screenshot of what you'll see when visiting the National Archives' website.
As of Wednesday evening, a total of 2,182 new documents were available there in PDF format. That's a lot of stuff, and not every single document contains information that's particularly revelatory, or even that interesting, so best of luck with parsing through it all.
While it's going to take experts and historians quite a while to fully examine all of these new documents, the general vibe right now is that you shouldn't expect anything new or major from them. Writing for the New York Times on March 18, Adam Nagourney said a lot of these documents were held back from the public for so long as a way to "[protect] the sources and methods of U.S. intelligence gathering operations."
Will any other assassination files be released?
As part of the same executive order that got the ball rolling on the release of new JFK-related files, Trump also ordered the release of all government files pertaining to the investigations into the assassinations of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and Kennedy's younger brother, Robert F. Kennedy. (Senior, that is.) As with JFK, the circumstances surrounding their deaths have prompted numerous conspiracy theories over the decades.
A minister, activist and major figure in the push for African American civil rights in the 1960s, King was shot and killed while standing on a second-floor balcony at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis on April 4, 1968. The official story has long held that he was killed by fugitive James Earl Ray, but conspiracy theories over the decades have argued that some other forces were at work. King's own family has come to believe that Ray was a scapegoat in the killing, though no other suspects have ever been charged.
A politician in his own right, Robert F. Kennedy served as attorney general in his brother's administration and under his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson. He became a leading Democratic candidate for president in 1968, but was shot and killed by Sirhan Sirhan at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on June 5, 1968, shortly after winning the California primary.Â
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