On Monday President Trump’s ODNI Tulsi Gabbard released 320,000 pages of documents related to the April 4, 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Today, after nearly 60 years of questions surrounding the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., we are releasing 230,000 MLK assassination files, available now at https://t.co/71P3p5jBgK. The documents include details about the FBI’s investigation into the assassination… pic.twitter.com/l96t9tgYmn
— DNI Tulsi Gabbard (@DNIGabbard) July 21, 2025
The files can be accessed here, at the National Archives website.
The assassination of Dr. King was a major incident in American history 57 years ago in Memphis, sparking nation-wide riots in its wake. The week after his murder saw rioting in 100 U.S. cities, resulting in 43 deaths and over 3,000 injuries.
King died at age 39, and had been leading the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, agitating and protesting for Black Civil Rights since 1955. By the time of his murder, King’s political power had waned in contrast to the then-growing black power movement.
A federal court in 1977 had ordered the King files, including audio recordings of King’s wiretaps, sealed for 50 years until January 2027. The Justice Department has requested a judge to lift the seal early, specifically related to documents about the assassination rather than the broader files which would include the surveillance archives. A judge approved the early release of these 230,000 files, 18 months prior to their scheduled release date.
Gabbard has said that the release fulfills the transparency mandate set by President Trump.
Some claim that a ‘preliminary AI analysis’ of the files so far indicates ‘no groundbreaking revelations.’
King was shot while standing on a balcony outside his second-floor room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. The assassin was alleged to be James Earl Ray. Ray fled to London, was apprehended in 1969 and charged, and pleaded guilty to the murder, receiving a 99-year sentence.
Ray recanted his plea several days later, claiming he was set up by a man named “Raoul.” Some note that Ray’s background as a petty criminal doesn’t explain how he immediately got abroad with fake IDs and passports, and also note that there were no fingerprints found on the rifle.
Ray died in 1998 in prison, but by 1994, others started alleging that there had been an ongoing government conspiracy to assassinate King.
The surviving King family has long maintained that they do not believe Ray was the killer. They have said that they believe a Memphis Police Department officer was the real assassin. Ray’s attorney, William F. Pepper, has maintained that he believes Ray was innocent, as well as the appellate judge who was the last to review the case, Judge Joe Brown.
A 1999 civil trial in Memphis, King v. Jowers et al., found that there had been a government conspiracy to kill King after a local businessman, Loyd Jowers, admitted in 1993 on ABC’s PrimeTime Live that he had helped organize the assassination with the help of the Mafia and local police. The Department of Justice officially denied working with the mob on this matter and called it a “conspiracy theory.”
King had previously been the subject of blackmail operations by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had his deputy, William Sullivan, write a blackmail letter delivered to King, threatening to expose FBI wiretaps of King having alleged sex with underage white prostitutes, rape, and homosexual sex. In the letter, Sullivan wrote that King would be better off if he simply killed himself rather than risk the tapes coming to light.
1968 was a year of political assassinations, upheaval, and political shocks. The Tet Offensive on January 30th caused CBS broadcaster Walter Cronkite to declare the war “unwinnable,” even though American forces had completely wiped out the Viet Cong during the struggle.
On March 31st, President Lyndon Johnson announced he would not run for re-election. King was killed within the week, on April 4th. Robert Kennedy was killed at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on June 5th, in another political assassination which has long been shrouded in suspicion and controversy. The August Democratic National Convention in Chicago was marked by violence between pro-America and pro-Communist protesters.
Robert F. Kennedy was quoted as saying after the King assassination, “Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice between fellow human beings. He died in the cause of that effort.”
The FBI wiretaps used against King were authorized by Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy Sr. in October 1963, father to the current HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The wiretaps were justified due to King speechwriter Stanley Levison’s connection to Communist agents, in addition to other Communists like Jack O’Dell and Bayard Rustin. The FBI believed he was a financial officer for the CPUSA and used this to justify extensive surveillance of King.
The information about Levison had been collected by, and passed along to the FBI, by third-party groups that track “hate” and “extremism” which labeled King’s political efforts as such. This cooperation by private groups with the FBI aided and facilitated the Bureau’s surveillance of King and his associates.
The wiretapping continued well beyond the original limit, becoming extensive, including surveillance of King’s home, office, and even hotel rooms over several years. King had come out against the ongoing Vietnam War a year before his death. In the speech in New York City, King claimed the war was indefensible, calling the U.S. government the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” The editorial board of the Washington Post, in response in a piece named “Dr. King’s Error,” said King had “diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, and his people.”
It has long been a Capitol Hill rumor in Washington, DC that select Senators were given copies of King’s sexual assaults of underage prostitutes, where staff heard the tapes.
By 1983, President Ronald Reagan signed a law to create a “Martin Luther King” holiday on the third Monday of January, as a federal holiday. By 2000, all 50 U.S. states recognized the holiday. Part of the motivation for putting the holiday on that date was to push out the southern holiday known as “Lee-Jackson Day,” which celebrated Confederate Generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.
The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., was officially unveiled and opened to the public on August 22, 2011. The 30-foot granite statue of Dr. King, known as “Stone of Hope,” was carved by Lei Yixin, a Chinese sculptor. His vision reflects the iconic imagery from King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. The statue was carved from a single block of light pink/pale white granite sourced from Fujian Province, China.
The other large archive of assassination files involve the killing of President John F. Kennedy. Created by statute in 1992, the files were released gradually and most were public by 2017, though a remaining 63,000 were finally ordered by President Trump to be released in March. As part of that release, where all files were mandated to be released, online experts found a secret folder of 75 still-withheld documents that were being specially withheld from public release despite the Trump order and command to release the files.
King’s daughter responded to the release on Twitter with the statement, “now do the Epstein files.”
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