Washington
\n AP
\n \u00a0\u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n The Trump administration has released records of the FBI\u2019s surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr.,<\/a> despite opposition from the slain Nobel laureate\u2019s family and the civil rights group that he led until his 1968 assassination.\n <\/p>\n \n The release involves more than 240,000 pages of records that 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.\n <\/p>\n \n In a lengthy statement released Monday, King\u2019s two living children, Martin III, 67, and Bernice, 62, said their father\u2019s killing has been a \u201ccaptivating public curiosity for decades.\u201d But the pair emphasized the personal nature of the matter and urged that the files \u201cbe viewed within their full historical context.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n The Kings got advance access to the records and had their own teams reviewing them. Those efforts continued even as the government granted public access. Among the documents are leads the FBI received after King\u2019s assassination and details of the CIA\u2019s fixation on King\u2019s pivot to international anti-war and anti-poverty movements in the years before he was killed. It was not immediately clear whether the documents shed new light on King\u2019s life, the Civil Rights Movement or his murder.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cAs the children of Dr. King and Mrs. Coretta Scott King, his tragic death has been an intensely personal grief \u2014 a devastating loss for his wife, children, and the granddaughter he never met \u2014 an absence our family has endured for over 57 years,\u201d they wrote. \u201cWe ask those who engage with the release of these files to do so with empathy, restraint, and respect for our family\u2019s continuing grief.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n They also repeated the family\u2019s long-held contention that James Earl Ray<\/a>, the man convicted of assassinating King, was not solely responsible, if at all.\n <\/p>\n \n Bernice King was 5 years old when her father was killed at the age of 39. Martin III was 10.\n <\/p>\n \n A statement from the office of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard called the disclosure \u201cunprecedented\u201d and said many of the records had been digitized for the first time. She praised President Donald Trump for pushing the issue.\n <\/p>\n \n Trump promised as a candidate to release files related to President John F. Kennedy\u2019s 1963 assassination. When Trump took office in January, he signed an executive order<\/a> to declassify the JFK records, along with those associated with Robert F. Kennedy\u2019s and King\u2019s 1968 assassinations.\n <\/p>\n \n The government unsealed the JFK records<\/a> in March and disclosed some RFK files<\/a> in April.\n <\/p>\n \n The announcement from Gabbard\u2019s office included a statement from Alveda King, Martin Luther King Jr.\u2019s niece, who is an outspoken conservative and has broken from King\u2019s children on various topics \u2014 including the FBI files. Alveda King said she was \u201cgrateful to President Trump\u201d for his \u201ctransparency.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Separately, Attorney General Pam Bondi\u2019s<\/a> social media account featured a picture of the attorney general with Alveda King.\n <\/p>\n \n Besides fulfilling the intent of his January executive order, the latest release serves as another alternative headline for Trump as he tries to mollify supporters angry over his administration\u2019s handling of records concerning the sex trafficking investigation of Jeffrey Epstein, who killed himself behind bars while awaiting trial in 2019, during Trump\u2019s first presidency. Trump last Friday ordered the Justice Department to release grand jury testimony<\/a> but stopped short of unsealing the entire case file.\n <\/p>\n \n Bernice King and Martin Luther King III did not mention Trump in their statement Monday. But Bernice King later posted on her personal Instagram account a black-and-white photo of her father, looking annoyed, with the caption \u201cNow, do the Epstein files.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n And some civil rights activists did not spare the president.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cTrump releasing the MLK assassination files is not about transparency or justice,\u201d said the Rev. Al Sharpton. \u201cIt\u2019s a desperate attempt to distract people from the firestorm engulfing Trump over the Epstein files and the public unraveling of his credibility among the MAGA base.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n The King Center, founded by King\u2019s widow and now led by Bernice King, reacted separately from what Bernice said jointly with her brother. The King Center statement framed the release as a distraction \u2014 but from more than short-term political controversy.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cIt is unfortunate and ill-timed, given the myriad of pressing issues and injustices affecting the United States and the global society,\u201d the King Center, linking those challenges to MLK\u2019s efforts. \u201cThis righteous work should be our collective response to renewed attention on the assassination of a great purveyor of true peace.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n The King records, meanwhile, were initially intended to be sealed until 2027, until Justice Department attorneys asked a federal judge<\/a> to lift the sealing order ahead of its expiration date. Scholars, history buffs and journalists have been preparing to study the documents to find new information about his assassination on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee.\n <\/p>\n \n The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which King co-founded in 1957 as the Civil Rights Movement blossomed, opposed the release. They, along with King\u2019s family, argued that the FBI illegally surveilled King and other civil rights figures, tapping their offices and phone lines with the aim of discrediting them and their movement.\n <\/p>\n \n It has long been established that then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was intensely interested if not obsessed with King and others that he considered radicals. FBI records released previously show how Hoover\u2019s bureau wiretapped King\u2019s telephone lines, bugged his hotel rooms and used informants to get information against him.\n <\/p>\n