By: Fern Sidman

In a move poised to reignite decades of public speculation and historical scrutiny, President Donald Trump announced Monday that his administration will release 80,000 pages of previously classified, unredacted documents related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, delivering on a promise that has long stirred interest among historians, journalists, and conspiracy theorists alike.

As reported by The Hill, Trump made the announcement while touring the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., where he also presided over his first meeting as chair of the Kennedy Center Board of Trustees. “While we’re here, I thought it would be appropriate — we are, tomorrow, announcing and giving all of the Kennedy files,” Trump told reporters. “People have been waiting for decades for this.”

The president emphasized that the release will be entirely unredacted, emphasizing his directive to intelligence officials: “Just don’t redact, you can’t redact.” Trump said the files, which he described as “interesting,” would be made available in full — leaving no room, at least in theory, for further concealment by intelligence agencies.

“You’ve got a lot of reading,” Trump said, adding that he would leave it up to the public to draw their own conclusions. “I’m not doing summaries — you’ll write your own summary.”

According to The Hill, Trump also noted that he had instructed Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and other officials to ensure the full release proceeds without delay. The disclosure, he said, will finally provide the transparency many Americans have sought since the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963, by Lee Harvey Oswald — at least according to the official record.

Trump’s announcement follows through on a key campaign promise he reiterated throughout his 2024 presidential bid. “I said during the campaign I’d do it, and I’m a man of my word,” he declared on Monday.

However, this is not the first time Trump has pledged to fully declassify JFK assassination records. During his first term, he also vowed transparency,  but ultimately withheld some documents at the urging of intelligence agencies, citing national security concerns. The Hill reported that this decision drew criticism from open government advocates and Kennedy assassination researchers, many of whom have pushed for full disclosure under the 1992 President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act.

That legislation, passed unanimously by Congress, required that all remaining classified materials related to the assassination be released by October 2017, unless agencies could demonstrate that their disclosure posed a threat to national defense or intelligence operations, as was explained in The Hill report. Yet, both Trump in 2017 and President Biden in later years approved extensions to keep certain files sealed, prolonging the mystery and fueling public skepticism.

Trump had already taken steps earlier this year to broaden the scope of government transparency around high-profile assassinations. According to the information provided in The Hill report, In January, he signed an executive order calling for the declassification of documents not only related to JFK’s assassination, but also those concerning former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The directive instructed the Director of National Intelligence and the Attorney General to present a formal plan for the full release of records within 15 days.

That broader initiative suggests that the administration may be preparing a cascade of disclosures that could significantly impact historical understandings of three of the most consequential assassinations in American history.

The release is expected to once again stir longstanding public suspicions about the official narrative surrounding JFK’s death — particularly lingering theories of CIA involvement, Mafia connections, or the existence of a second shooter beyond Lee Harvey Oswald, The Hill report suggested. While most historians agree that Oswald acted alone, conspiracy theories have flourished for over half a century, fueled in part by the persistent classification of government files.

The last significant document release came in 2022, when the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) made nearly 13,000 previously unseen documents public, as was noted in the report at The Hill.  Yet researchers complained that many of those files remained heavily redacted, frustrating efforts to achieve a full picture of events and the intelligence community’s possible role.

With Trump’s renewed vow to offer complete, unfiltered access, the upcoming release could represent one of the most consequential moments in U.S. archival history — assuming the files truly contain material not previously disclosed or withheld in part.

For Trump, the release serves as both a campaign talking point and a symbolic blow against the “deep state.” For historians and the public, it offers a long-awaited chance to peel back the curtain on one of the most analyzed — and most mysterious — chapters in American political history.