Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took to X to thank President Donald Trump for declassifying files related to the assassinations of his uncle, former President John F. Kennedy, his father, Robert F. Kennedy, and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
On January 23, Trump signed a long-awaited executive order to declassify all files related to those three assassinations. After signing the executive order, Trump handed his pen to an aide and told him to give it to Kennedy, whom Trump has nominated to be his Health and Human Services Secretary.
“A lot of people have been waiting for this for years, for decades. And everything will be revealed,” Trump said while signing the order.
“More than 50 years after the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Federal Government has not released to the public all of its records related to those events. Their families and the American people deserve transparency and truth. It is in the national interest to finally release all records related to these assassinations without delay,” the executive order states.
President @realDonaldTrump signs an Executive Order to declassify the JFK, RFK, and MLK Jr. files! pic.twitter.com/BHHdjMLrl0
— Margo Martin (@MargoMartin47) January 23, 2025
Kennedy thanked Trump for declassifying the files in a post on X, thanking Trump “for trusting American citizens and for taking the first step down the road towards reversing this disastrous trajectory” of government secrecy.
“JFK warned that ‘The very word ‘secrecy’ is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secrecy … We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it,’” he wrote.
“The 60-year strategy of lies and secrecy, disinformation, censorship, and defamation employed by Intel officials to obscure and suppress troubling facts about JFK’s assassination has provided the playbook for a series of subsequent crises — the MLK and RFK assassinations, Vietnam, 9/11, the Iraq war and COVID — that have each accelerated the subversion of our exemplary democracy by the Military/Medical Industrial Complex and pushed us further down the road toward totalitarianism,” Kennedy added.
“A government that withholds information is inherently fearful of its citizens’ ability to make informed decisions and participate actively in democracy,” he concluded.
JFK warned that “The very word ‘secrecy’ is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secrecy … We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers… https://t.co/cM0lxiycA7
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) January 24, 2025
Trump’s executive order requires the Director of National Intelligence and the Attorney General — Tulsi Gabbard and Pam Bondi, both of whom have not been confirmed by the Senate yet because of Democrats’ stall tactics — to come up with a plan within 15 days for declassifying and releasing the JFK files, and another plan within 45 days for the release of the RFK and MLK files.
