Trump Makes a Promise He Has Already Broken

If elected, he says he'll release all the JFK files. Just like he said in 2017

When Messenger correspondent Marc Caputo asked insurrectionist candidate Donald Trump about the last of the JFK files last week, the 2024 Republican frontrunner promised: “ I will release the remaining portion very early in my term.”

Sound familiar? Six years ago, on October 27, 2017 President Trump tweeted this:

JFK Files are being carefully released. In the end there will be great transparency. It is my hope to get just about everything to public!

The next day Trump tweeted:

JFK Files released, long ahead schedule.

Fact Check

“Just about everything” was not released and what was released was way behind the schedule set by the 1992 JFK Records Act.

The truth is that, after a meeting with CIA director Mike Pompeo, Trump acquiesced to ALL of the secrecy demands of the clandestine service, allowing the Agency and other federal agencies to keep portions of 15,000-plus assassination-related records secret for at least four more years. In an accompanying memo, Trump said he had “no choice” but to go along with the CIA’s demands.

Under the JFK Records Act, the president has final authority over the JFK files. Trump did have a choice. He just chose not exercise it. He caved to the very people he denounces as “the deep state.”

Among the JFK documents that Trump allowed to remain redacted:

• a 1961 memo to JFK about reorganizing the CIA (which is still heavily redacted, thanks to President Biden);

• the 1962 debriefing of Soviet defector Robert Webster, which illuminated the CIA’s unusual treatment of Lee Harvey Oswald; and

• portions of the Pentagon’s 1963 secret false flag plan to provoke a war with Cuba.

• a 1977 memo about the CIA’s secret JFK investigation, the results of which have never been made public (the Heath memo);

• the personnel files of at least three CIA officials (David Phillips, Birch O’Neal, and J. Walton Moore) who were informed about Oswald’s politics, personal life, and foreign travels while JFK was still alive.

How credible is Trump’s latest promise? Decide for yourself.

C