The Trump administration has released hundreds of thousands of FBI files detailing the agency’s surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr., ignoring requests from his family and civil rights groups to keep them classified.
Some 240,000 pages of intelligence included in the digital document dump 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.
In a statement released on Monday, King’s two living children, Martin III, 67, and Bernice, 62, said their father’s death had been a “captivating public curiosity for decades,” but reiterated that the files were deeply personal and urged people to read them “within their full historical context.”
“He was relentlessly targeted by an invasive, predatory, and deeply disturbing disinformation and surveillance campaign orchestrated by J. Edgar Hoover through the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” the King children said in their statement.
“The intent … was not only to monitor, but to discredit, dismantle and destroy Dr. King’s reputation and the broader American Civil Rights Movement.”
“These actions were not only invasions of privacy, but intentional assaults on the truth — undermining the dignity and freedoms of private citizens who fought for justice, designed to neutralize those who dared to challenge the status quo.”
The Kings said they “support transparency and historical accountability” but “object to any attacks on our father’s legacy or attempts to weaponize it to spread falsehoods.”
After Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was freed from jail (under a $2,000 appeal bond), he was greeted by his wife, Coretta, and children, Martin and Yolanda, at the airport in Chamblee, Ga., on Oct. 27, 1960.
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The King family was granted access to the documents for review before they were unsealed, but was still poring over them when they became public, according to The Associated Press.
Included in the files are leads pursued by the FBI following King’s assassination, as well as details of the CIA’s investigation into King’s focus on international anti-war and anti-poverty movements in the years before he was killed.
“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,” his children wrote.
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“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.”
They also doubled down on their family’s steadfast belief that the man accused of killing their father, James Earl Ray, was not solely responsible, if at all.
King was 39 when he was shot dead on April 4, 1968, while standing on his hotel balcony at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn. Bernice King was five and Martin III was 10.
Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, said the unsealing of the files was “unprecedented” but commended President Donald Trump for facilitating their release.
During his presidential campaign, Trump also vowed to release files related to former president John F. Kennedy’s 1963 assassination and signed an executive order to declassify the JFK records when he assumed office in January, along with files associated with Robert F. Kennedy’s and King’s 1968 assassinations.
The government unsealed the JFK records in March and shared some RFK files in April.
Despite King’s surviving children’s disapproval of the unsealing of their father’s file, other family members have expressed support for the Trump administration’s actions.
Alveda King, Martin Luther King Jr.’s niece, said she was “grateful to President Trump” for his “transparency.”
Meanwhile, civil rights leader Al Sharpton says the release of the King files is “not about transparency or justice,” but is merely a “distraction” from “the firestorm engulfing Trump over the Epstein files and the public unraveling of his credibility.”
The King Center, founded by King’s widow and prominent civil rights activist Coretta Scott King and now run by Bernice King, reacted separately from Bernice’s joint statement with her brother, framing the release as a distraction from both long- and short-term political controversy.
“The King Center believes it is unfortunate and ill-timed, given the myriad of pressing issues and injustices affecting the United States and the global society, to distract from the critical needs and traumatic outcomes resulting from these issues and injustices,” the statement said.
“Further, we cannot afford to be diverted from how we each can contribute to changing the trajectory of our ‘World House.’ If we are not careful, that is what the release of the FBI files could precipitate for many.”
Trump has spent the last two weeks attempting to quell growing calls from his supporters to release incriminating documents detailing the actions of the former financier and child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein after his administration U-turned on a promise to share a so-called “client list” and other unseen documents related to him.
The president’s yo-yoing has splintered Republican support, with some of his staunch allies straying from their otherwise supportive Trump rhetoric.
On Monday, outspoken Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote on X, “If you tell the base of people, who support you, of deep state treasonous crimes, election interference, blackmail, and rich powerful elite evil cabals, then you must take down every enemy of The People.”
“If not. [sic] The base will turn and there’s no going back,” she warned.
“Dangling bits of red meat no longer satisfies. They want the whole steak dinner and will accept nothing else.”
Meanwhile, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said on Monday that he will not allow votes on measures related to the Epstein files during the House’s final week before an extended recess. It comes less than seven days after Johnson called on the president to release the Epstein files during a podcast appearance with right-wing commentator Benny Johnson.
“It’s a very delicate subject, but we should put everything out there and let the people decide it,” Johnson said last Tuesday.
“I agree with the sentiment that we need to put it out there,” he continued, adding that Attorney General Pam Bondi needs to explain why she has not presented Epstein-related documents she had previously said were “sitting on my desk.”
Bernice King and Martin III did not mention Trump in their statement. Nonetheless, later in the day, Bernice King shared a black-and-white photo of her late father, looking annoyed, with the caption “Now, do the Epstein files.”
— With files from The Associated Press
