Trump vows to release sealed FBI file on MLK assassination, rails against DEI

President-elect Donald Trump announced that when he takes office, he intends to declassify FBI records related to the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., one day before the federal holiday observing the civil rights icon. Trump will also officially be sworn in on Monday as the 47th president of the United States.

While delivering a more than hour-long speech at a pre-inauguration “victory rally” in Washington, D.C. on Sunday, Trump told his thousands of supporters that he intends to release decades-old classified documents that detail the federal government’s investigation of King’s 1968 murder. He said he would do the same for the assassinations of former President John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert F. Kennedy, a former U.S. attorney general and senator.

“We’re going to make public remaining records relating to the assassinations of President John F Kennedy, his brother, Robert Kennedy, as well as Dr Martin Luther King, Jr and other topics for great public interest,” said Trump. “It’s all going to be released on consent.”

Throughout the 2024 presidential election cycle, Trump promised to declassify the JFK secret files as he did during his first term in office, but his White House later delayed it, citing concerns about national security. A portion of those files reportedly contained FBI analysis that “harshly” portrayed Dr. King in a “negative light.”

However, the file on King that Trump mentioned on Sunday is separate from the analysis found in the JFK assassination file. Many documents detailing the FBI’s investigations of the assassinations of King and the Kennedys remain classified until 2027. Given the FBI’s corrupt and illegal surveillance of King and others during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, there has been speculation over the years that the agency was somehow involved in his assassination. There is no evidence to suggest that was the case, according to a task force that investigated the FBI’s harassment of King formed by the U.S. Department of Justice in 1975.

During his Sunday rally, Trump also railed against DEI, declaring, “We’re going to stop the destructive and divisive diversity equity and inclusion mandates all across the government and private sector.”

Seemingly pointing to the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling that overturned affirmative action based on college admissions, the incoming president added, “The Supreme Court ruled that the United States is allowed to go by the merit system, which is what made us great in the first place.” Though Trump appeared to suggest the affirmative action ruling applied to the private sector, such as business, the ruling was only made on race-based college admissions.

While certain DEI policies in the private sector have been challenged in court, no ruling has mandated a “merit system” beyond education.

“You’re focusing on character, competence and qualifications and all hiring decisions … now you’re allowed to go by competence and ability and genius,” Trump continued. “You don’t have to hire somebody to send up one of his rocket ships that doesn’t know anything about what’s happening.”

Trump and other Republicans have repeatedly taken aim at DEI over the past few years, suggesting that elected and government jobs and other professions held by Black and brown people are a result of meeting racial quotas and not qualifications — a tactic that critics have said is racist and promotes the idea of white exceptionalism.

As Democratic strategist Joel Payne told theGrio, “They don’t think that the best and the brightest include Black people.”

Trump’s inauguration ironically falls on the federal holiday that honors Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. His son, Martin Luther King III, told theGrio that despite Trump’s policy positions being in complete contrast to his father’s vision for America, it’s important for Black and brown communities to “keep public pressure” on elected officials and the Supreme Court.

“We have to find a way to move the ball forward when there is a group of people who are consistently trying to move the ball backward,” he said.

“My dad and his team and … our ancestors who came before us, they somehow were able to make a way out of no way,” King continued. “Dad’s vision was about freedom and justice and equality for all humankind. We know that can be done, but you have to always work on it.”