Donald Trump orders the release of documents on the assassinations of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King

DER SPIEGEL Donald Trump orders the release of documents on the assassinations of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King 8 hours • 3 minutes reading time His predecessor, Biden, had kept some files on the murders of the Kennedy brothers and the civil rights activist King under lock and key - in the national interest. US President Trump has no concerns about this. US President Donald Trump has ordered the release of the last classified documents on the assassination of then US head of state John F. Kennedy six decades ago. "This is a big deal, isn't it? Many people have been waiting for this for years, for decades," Trump said on Thursday when he signed a corresponding decree. "Everything will be revealed." Documents on the assassinations of John F. Kennedy's younger brother Robert F. Kennedy and the civil rights activist Martin Luther King will also be released. Trump gave the pen he used to sign the document to an employee with instructions to pass the writing instrument on to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He is the son of former Attorney General and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy and the nephew of John F. Kennedy - and Trump's candidate for Secretary of Health. Trump's order provides for the "complete and unrestricted release" of the files on John F. Kennedy's assassination, i.e. without the redactions that he accepted when he released them in 2017 during his first term in office. "It is in the national interest to finally release all records related to these assassinations immediately," it said. Trump's gesture to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Kennedy was fatally shot while driving in an open car in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. An official investigation after Kennedy's death concluded that the 46-year-old US Democrat was shot by the lone gunman Lee Harvey Oswald, who in turn was killed two days later by nightclub owner Jack Ruby. To this day, numerous conspiracy myths surround the assassination of the charismatic president, which caused astonishment around the world. Trump's move is also a gesture to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is himself one of the best-known spreaders of such myths. Five years after the assassination of "JFK," Robert F. Kennedy also fell victim to an assassination attempt: he was gunned down in Los Angeles on the night of June 5, 1968, and succumbed to his injuries a day later. At that time, he was a promising candidate for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination and also for election victory. 97 percent of the documents have already been published In December 2022, then-President Joe Biden released thousands more secret documents on the "JFK" case; according to the US National Archives, 97 percent of the documents had been published. Biden stated at the time that a "limited" number of documents would remain classified. This is necessary to prevent "harm to military defense, intelligence operations, policing or foreign policy." Trump himself had more than 53,000 documents released in seven tranches during his first term in office from 2017 to 2021. The pastor and civil rights activist Martin Luther King was murdered in Memphis on April 4, 1968. James Earl Ray was convicted of the murder and died in prison in 1998 - but King's children had expressed doubts in the past as to whether Ray was really the perpetrator.