This week, former President Donald Trump promised to release all documents pertinent to former President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, in response to his nephew’s claims that U.S. intelligence agents may have been involved in his death.

“I released a lot, as you know. And I’ll release everything else,” Trump said in an interview with The Messenger on Monday regarding the Kennedy documents.

During his presidency, Trump made some records public but not all. His administration claimed at the time that it was unable to release all of the documents because “certain information should continue to be redacted because of identifiable national security, law enforcement, and foreign affairs concerns.”

“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. 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,” according to a 2018 statement from the White House.

In 1992, George H.W. Bush, the president at the time and a former director of the CIA, approved a statute mandating the release of all JFK-related documents. However, other presidential administrations, such as the Biden administration, have delayed making the entire collection of documents public.

Later, although he chose not to disclose all assassination-related information, Biden did reveal certain details. Late in December, federal authorities made available more than 13,000 documents, including information about the suspect Lee Harvey Oswald’s time in Mexico City.

However, the CIA asserts that approximately 4,300 data remain blacked out and censored. “We believe all CIA records related to [former CIA agent George] Joannides were previously released with only minor redactions, such as CIA employee names and locations,” the agency stated in a press release at the time, adding that “tremendous progress” had been made.

Trump was asked in an interview with The Messenger if the public should be concerned about anything related to the JFK archives. Trump responded, “Well, I don’t want to comment on that.” “But I will tell you that I have released a lot. I will release the remaining portion very early in my term.”

In interviews with media outlets this month, 2024 Democratic candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. stated that he believes the CIA was involved in the November 1963 assassination of his uncle, President John F. Kennedy. Before being shot and killed by nightclub proprietor Jack Ruby, who was presumably suspected of being a mobster, Oswald, a former Marine who defected to the Soviet Union, was arrested and charged with the assassination. Ruby ultimately passed away in custody.

“There is overwhelming evidence that the CIA was involved in his murder. I think it’s beyond a reasonable doubt at this point,” Kennedy said on radio station WABC 770 this year. “The evidence is overwhelming that the CIA was involved in the murder, and in the cover-up,” he declared.

More on this story via The Republic Brief:

Later, he revealed to another news organization that following JFK’s assassination, his father, former Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, automatically assumed that the CIA might be responsible. Kennedy has made similar assertions in the past. He has also claimed that Sen. Kennedy wasn’t assassinated in 1968 at a California resort by Palestinian supporter Sirhan Sirhan, but rather by someone else. CONTINUE READING…