Donald Trump’s government released on Monday 21 hundreds of thousands of FBI surveillance records on Martin Luther King Jr., despite the opposition of the Nobel Prize winner and the civil rights group he led until his murder in 1968.
The disclosure involves about 230,000 pages of documents that had been confidential by the Court since 1977, when the FBI first gathered the records and handed them to the National Administration of Archives and Records.
Martin Luther King’s family, including their two living children, Martin III and Bernice, was notified in advance of the disclosure and had their own teams reviewing the documents before public release.
In a publication on social networks announcing the disclosure, National Intelligence Director, Tulsi Gabbard, said the 230,000 files include details about possible clues in the case and information of James Earl Ray’s former cellmate.
Ray stated guilty about King’s murder, but later resigned to confession and maintained his innocence until his death in 1998. Gabbard also shared a link to the documents released on the National Archive Administration website and records.
In a joint statement, the two children stated that their father underwent an “invasive, predatory and deeply disturbing” operation at the command of John Edgar Hoover, then FBI director.
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They said the campaign aimed to “not just monitor, but discredit, dismantle and destroy” both Martin Luther King and the movement he led, classifying actions as “designed to counteract those who dare challenge the status quo.”
Earlier this year, court lawyers asked a federal judge to revoke the order of confidentiality before his expiration date.
In addition to the activist’s family, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference-of which King was co-founded in 1957-opposed the release of archives, arguing that the FBI illegally watched Martin Luther King and other civil rights figures, stapling his offices and telephone lines to discredit them, as well as their movement.
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Scholars, historians and journalists prepare to study the documents and seek new information about the murder on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee.
It is already known that the then FBI director was intense interest in King and others he considered radical. FBI records previously released how the Hoover department stapled the activist’s telephone lines, invaded their hotel rooms and used informants to obtain information against him.
During last year’s presidential campaign, Trump promised to publicize files related to the murder of President John F. Kennedy in 1963.
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When he took office in January, Trump signed a decree to disqualify JFK records, along with those associated with the murders of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, both in 1968.
The government made JFK records public in March and released some RFK files in April.
Disclosure occurs at a time when Trump faces criticism of some supporters for the way his government dealt with the files of the sex trafficking case against former financialist Jeffrey Epstein.
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The influential Reverend Al Sharpton stated that the president released the files to divert attention from the “storm that involves Trump over Epstein’s files and the public collapse of his credibility between the magician base.”
Assistant Attorney General Todd Blanche requested on Friday the disclosure of the great jury transcriptions in the proceedings against sexual abuser Jeffrey Epstein and his ex-girlfriend.
The request occurs while the government tries to contain the crisis generated by the announcement that it would not disclose additional Epstein investigation files, although it promised earlier that it would.
