After a Rocky Rollout, Trump Promises 80,000 Pages of JFK Material
The president says he's 'heard of the files' but hasn't any of read them
President Donald Trump announced he will on Tuesday release 80,000 pages of unredacted files related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
“I’ve instructed my people … lots of different people, [Director of National Intelligence] Tulsi Gabbard, that they must be released tomorrow,” the president told reporters while touring the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.
The origins of the 80,00 pages of material are unknown. The National Archives database holds 3,886 JFK records with redactions, comprising perhaps 15,000 pages of material. The FBI announced last month that it was sending another 2,400 assassination-related records (comprising 14,000 pages of material) to the National Archives for future release.
By way of comparison, the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection, housed at the Archives II facility in College Park, Maryland, has more than 319,000 documents comprising an estimated 3 million pages of material related to the death of the liberal president in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.
The National Archives has set up a new web page where it says the released documents will be posted on March 18.
Rocky Rollout
The administration’s rollout of its declassification plans has mostly disappointed those expecting news in the long-hidden documents dealing with the murder of the 35th president.
Last month, the administration’s much-touted release of material on disgraced financier and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein was something of a “debacle.” It turned out the documents, distributed by young conservative influencers in a high-profile press event, had been in the public domain for years and contained nothing new. Attorney General Pam Bondi and the influencers were shown to be unfamiliar with the very news story they were seeking to influence.
In January, Trump asked aides for plans for release of JFK documents within 15 days and for release of records related to the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 45 days. None of those plans have been made public.
After a month, JFK Facts gave Trump an interim grade of D+ based on his failure to release any new records, besides the announcement of the pending FBI files.
When Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, chair of the House Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, announced on social media that committee’s first hearing, scheduled for March 26, would focus on JFK’s assassination, the reaction of online Trump supporters was overwhelmingly negative.
“Stall tactics,” said one reader. Said another: “How about just release all the redacted documents and let the American people sort it out.”
Trump’s announcement came after longtime ally Tucker Carlson suggested last week that an unspecified "force” was resisting Trump’s executive order calling for “full and complete” disclosure. When Carlson charged that Sen. Tom Cotton, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was the obstacle to disclosure, Cotton denied it.
Congress passed the JFK Records Act in 1992 requiring all remaining government records about the JFK assassination to be released by October 2017, unless they posed certain risks to national defense or intelligence.
In October 2017, Trump promised to release all of the files but acquiesced at the last minute to CIA and FBI demands to withhold portions of thousands of documents. In December 2022, President Biden did the same, endorsing CIA plans to keep the last of the documents secret indefinitely.
Trump reversed himself during the 2024 campaign, saying he would release all of the records. In his first week in office he issued an executive order calling for “full and complete” JFK disclosure.
I'll defer any comments until tomorrow.
More terrible coverage from the NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/18/us/politics/jfk-assassination-documents-trump.html
"Historians have said they do not expect any major new revelations in these documents, or any information that would contradict the basic circumstances of the case. Every government authority that has examined Kennedy’s death has come to the same conclusion: He was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald, who fired a rifle from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository on Nov. 22, 1963."