Trump administration releases Martin Luther King files amid Epstein furore
Donald Trump ordered the publication of more than 240,000 pages of records relating to the FBI's surveillance of the slain Nobel laureate before his 1968 assassination
The documents have 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.
The records were released as the US president attempts to mollify supporters angry over his administration's handling of records concerning the late paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
Mr Trump's friendship with Epstein has been under intense scrutiny in recent weeks.
King's family, including his two living children, Martin III and Bernice, were given advance notice and had their own teams reviewing the records before the public disclosure.
In a lengthy statement released on Monday, the King children called their father's case a 'captivating public curiosity for decades'. But the pair emphasised the personal nature of the matter and urged that 'these files must be viewed within their full historical context'.
They wrote: '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 57 years.
'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.'
Mr Trump promised as a candidate to release government files related to President John F Kennedy's 1963 assassination. When Mr Trump took office in January 2025, he signed an executive order to declassify the JFK records, along with those associated with the assassinations of Robert F Kennedy and King.
The government unsealed the JFK records in March and disclosed some RFK files in April.
The King records were initially intended to be sealed until 2027, until Justice Department attorneys asked a federal judge to lift the order.
Scholars, history buffs and journalists have been preparing to study the documents to find new information about his assassination on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee.
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which King co-founded in 1957 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 J Edgar Hoover, then FBI director, was intensely interested if not obsessed with Kin g and others whom he considered radicals.
Previously released FBI records show Mr 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 Investigation (FBI),' the King children said in their statement.
King was assassinated as he accompanied striking sanitation workers in Memphis.
James Earl Ray pleaded guilty to the killing. He later renounced that plea and maintained his innocence until his death in 1998.
Members of King's family, and others, have questioned whether Ray acted alone or if he was even involved. King's widow, Coretta Scott King, asked for the probe to be reopened. In 1998, the attorney general Janet Reno directed the civil rights division of the Justice Department to take a new look.
The department said it 'found nothing to disturb the 1969 judicial determination that James Earl Ray murdered Dr King'.
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