Topline
While the Trump administration faces demands to release filings on financier Jeffrey Epstein, the Justice Department and U.S. intelligence officials on Monday unveiled records detailing the FBI’s surveillance of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. years ahead of their originally scheduled release.
The release includes more than 240,000 pages of the FBI’s surveillance of the civil rights leader, ... More
The records release, announced Monday by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, contains more than 240,000 pages of documents, though it’s not immediately clear whether the filings included new information on King’s life or his assassination.
President Donald Trump issued an executive order in January to unseal records related to President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, as well as Robert F. Kennedy’s and King’s assassinations in 1968.
Martin Luther King III and Bernice King, King’s living children, said in a statement on X the files should be “viewed within their full historical context” and engaged with “empathy, restraint, and respect for our family’s continuing grief.”
Martin Luther King III, 67, and Bernice King, 62, claimed their father was “relentlessly targeted by an invasive, predatory and deeply disturbing disinformation surveillance” campaign by the FBI and repeated their enduring belief James Earl Ray, who was convicted of King’s assassination, was “set up to take the blame,” citing a 1999 wrongful death case in which a Memphis, Tennessee, jury found King was the target of a larger conspiracy.
The documents include details about the FBI’s investigation into King’s assassination, Gabbard said, including potential leads, internal FBI memos and documents related to a former cellmate to James Early Ray, and statements the cellmate made about discussing an alleged assassination plot with Ray. The records also include evidence from Canadian law enforcement who joined an international search for Ray and “never-before-seen” CIA records detailing “overseas intelligence” on the hunt for Ray, Gabbard said. The newly released files expand on previously released details on the FBI’s investigation following King’s death in 1968, but it’s not immediately clear if major new revelations were unsealed.
This is a developing story.