Trump administration releases FBI files on MLK despite family objections

DOJ to release MLK Jr. files against family's wishes

The Department of Justice has announced that it will release FBI records on Martin Luther King, Jr. the civil rights leader who was assassinated in 1968.

The Trump administration has released FBI surveillance records on Martin Luther King Jr., despite objections from his family and the civil rights organization he led until his assassination in 1968.

The digital document dump includes more than 240,000 pages of records that had been under a court-imposed seal since 1977, when the FBI first gathered the records and turned them over to the National Archives and Records Administration.

What they're saying:

A statement from the office of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard called the disclosure "unprecedented" and said many of the records had been digitized for the first time to make it possible. She praised President Donald Trump for pushing the issue.

The announcement from Gabbard's office included a statement from Alveda King, Martin Luther King Jr.'s niece, who is an outspoken conservative and has broken from King's children on various topics — including the FBI files. Alveda King said she was "grateful to President Trump" for his "transparency."

The other side:

In a lengthy statement released Monday, King's two living children, Martin III, 67, and Bernice, 62, said their father’s assassination has been a "captivating public curiosity for decades." But the pair emphasized the personal nature of the matter, urging that "these files must be viewed within their full historical context."

"As the children of Dr. King and Mrs. Coretta Scott King, his tragic death has been an intensely personal grief — a devastating loss for his wife, children, and the granddaughter he never met -- an absence our family has endured for over 57 years," they wrote. "We ask those who engage with the release of these files to do so with empathy, restraint, and respect for our family’s continuing grief."

Civil rights leader Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. delivers a speech to a crowd of approximately 7,000 people on May 17, 1967 at UC Berkeley's Sproul Plaza in Berkeley, California. (Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

They also repeated the family's long-held contention that James Earl Ray, the man convicted of assassinating King, was not solely responsible, if at all.

Bernice King was 5-years old when her father was killed. Martin III was 10.

Bernice King and Martin Luther King III did not mention Trump in their statement Monday.

The backstory:

Trump promised as a candidate to release files related to President John F. Kennedy’s 1963 assassination. When Trump took office in January, he signed an executive order to declassify the JFK records, along with those associated with Robert F. Kennedy’s and King’s 1968 assassinations.

The government unsealed the JFK records in March and disclosed some RFK files in April.

The King records were initially intended to be sealed until 2027, until Justice Department attorneys asked a federal judge to lift the sealing order ahead of its expiration date.

Scholars, history buffs and journalists have been preparing to study the documents to find new information about his assassination on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee.

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which King co-founded in 1957 as the Civil Rights Movement blossomed, opposed the release. They, along with King’s family, argued that the FBI illegally surveilled King and other civil rights figures, tapping their offices and phone lines with the aim of discrediting them and their movement.

It has long been established that then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was intensely interested if not obsessed with King and others that he considered radicals. FBI records released previously show how Hoover’s bureau wiretapped King’s telephone lines, bugged his hotel rooms and used informants to get information against him.

Trump orders release of MLK, JFK and RFK documents

President Donald Trump signed an executive order to declassify files on the assassinations of former President John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert F. Kennedy and civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. LiveNOW from FOX host Josh Breslow spoke to Larry Sabato, Director of University of Virginia Center for politics, on the latest.

Opposition to King intensified even after the Civil Rights Movement compelled Congress and President Lyndon B. Johnson to enact the Civil Right Act of 1964 and the Voting Right Act of 1965. After those landmark victories, King turned much of his attention to economic justice and international peace. He was an outspoken critic of rapacious capitalism and the Vietnam War. King argued that political rights alone were not enough in an uneven economy. Many establishment figures like Hoover viewed King as a communist threat.

King was assassinated as he was aiding striking sanitation workers in Memphis, part of his explicit turn toward economic justice.

James Earl Ray, plead guilty to assassinating King. He later renounced that plea and maintained his innocence until his death in 1998.

Members of King’s family, and others, have long questioned whether Ray acted alone, or if he was even involved. Coretta Scott King for the probe to be reopened, and in 1998, then-Attorney General Janet Reno directed the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department to take a new look. The Justice Department said it "found nothing to disturb the 1969 judicial determination that James Earl Ray murdered Dr. King."

In their latest statement, Bernice King and Martin Luther King III repeated their assertions that Ray was set up, pointing to a 1999 civil case in which a Memphis jury in a wrongful death case concluded that Martin Luther King Jr. had been the target of a conspiracy.