Trump Pledges To Release All Kennedy Files If Elected

Former President Donald Trump pledged to release the remaining classified files regarding the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy if elected to a second term.

Donald Trump Announces He Will Release ALL of the JFK Assassination Files if Re-Elected President https://t.co/tQnkHsNVxX

— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) May 15, 2023

While speaking to The Messenger, Trump said he had “no choice” but to withhold some documents of the 2,800 he released in 2017, citing concerns from the intelligence community.

“I agree with the Archivist’s recommendation that the continued withholdings are necessary to protect against identifiable harm to national security, law enforcement, or foreign affairs that is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in immediate disclosure. I am also ordering agencies to re-review each of those redactions over the next 3 years,” Trump said in 2018.

“At any time during that review period, and no later than the end of that period, agencies shall disclose information that no longer warrants continued withholding,” Trump added.

The 1992 Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act, which directed the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to create a collection of records concerning Kennedy’s assassination, set 2017 as the deadline to release such records.

“I released a lot, as you know. And I will release everything else,” Trump said in the interview. “I will release the remaining portion very early in my term.”

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has defended the Trump administration’s decision to withhold the release of some Kennedy assassination records, noting that “not everything was 60 years ago.”

“I don’t want to spend a lot of time walking through this,” Pompeo told John Stossel in a 2023 interview. “It’s a little bit wonky, but suffice it to say, if Congress holds a hearing tomorrow on the Kennedy assassinations, the documents generated tomorrow will be part of those files.”

Since 2021, President Joe Biden has released over 12,000 documents about Kennedy’s assassination, but some estimate thousands more remain.

The Mary Ferrell Foundation, a nonprofit group, filed a lawsuit against Biden and NARA, arguing that the delay from 2017 violated the Kennedy Assassination Records Act.

On Nov. 22, 1963, Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. An investigation concluded that former U.S. Marine Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing Kennedy, but questions remain about whether Oswald was a “patsy” and if other factors were involved in the assassination.