The Justice Department sealed Pastor Martin Luther King Jr.’s FBI surveillance records about two years before the release of the court order. The request came to the objection of the civil rights group that Dr. King founded.
In his 28-page submission on Monday, Ed Martin, an interim US lawyer appointed by Trump for the District of Columbia, cited “a strong public interest in understanding the truth about assassinations.” Materials include wiretapping, hidden microphones, and reports from agents.
The request represents a sudden reversal between the FBI and the Department of Justice, blocking or slowing down the release of investigation files for decades under the president of both parties. President Trump, who ordered the move, has raised alternative theories about political assassinations and has questioned the role that the bureau plays to perpetuate those theories.
A federal judge in Washington has not yet scheduled a hearing on the claim.
In his submission, Martin said the Southern Christian Leaders Council, an Atlanta-based civil rights group that Dr. King used as his operational base, is now “opposed” to the motion.
Martin, a far-right political activist Recently compared The government’s diversity program against a decades-long racist campaign of racist oppression and fear in Jim Crow South said he is tracking Trump’s executive order.
Dr. King’s relatives raised questions about the federal investigation into his death.
But they also express concern that the Trump administration will dump all the files in the case into the public domain, possibly filling him up to air biased or manufactured accounts of his personal life.
Some supporters of Trump – The administration, which rapidly dismantles the federal civil rights initiative defended by Dr. King, questions his status as an American hero.
“For us, the assassination of our father is a very personal family loss we have endured over the past 56 years,” his children wrote in a statement in late January. “We hope to be provided with the opportunity to review the files as a family before they are published.”
It is not clear whether the Trump administration has agreed to the accommodation. Martin said the material will be reviewed by his superior, Attorney General Pam Bondy, before it is published.
The King Family did not respond to requests for comment. But the Rev. Al Sharpton, near Dr. King’s son, Martin Luther King III, said he had not yet responded, asking the administration to have a meeting to investigate the disclosures before the family was released.
“There’s concern that not all of these files are true,” Sharpton said in an interview.
The president ordered the release of a previously undisclosed investigation file related to Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual assault case and prison death, and the assassination of John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert F. Kennedy.
Already, the administration has released files related to Mr. Epstein and John Kennedy, but the revelation was modest. Many of the Epstein files were already published. Also, although new information may be incorporated into tens of thousands of documents relating to the Kennedy assassination, released later Tuesday, most of the material has been available for years through other sources.
The king’s record may be different. In 2019, Pulitzer Award-winning King biographer David J. Gallow looked into a swarm of previously unpublished documents at the National Archives, which provides outstanding details about Dr. King’s sex life. This material was collected in stolen hotel rooms as part of a campaign by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to destroy the reputation of civil rights leaders in the 1960s.
Gallow was heavily criticized for releasing the material. Critics accused Dr. King and other civil rights leaders of airing the details illegally obtained and curated by Hoover’s team, showing them from the worst point of view.
Efforts to publish the files began in the mid-1970s. Bernard Lee, a longtime assistant to Dr. King, has filed a lawsuit in the District Court of the District of Columbia against the FBI and several agents to illegally monitor Dr. King’s conversation in search of financial damages. This period was covered in 1963-1968 when he emerged as the country’s most powerful supporter for racial equality.
The case was dismissed. However, in 1977, tapes, transcripts, eavesdropping logs and other records were forwarded to the National Archives “according to an obvious compromise” between Lee and the government, Martin wrote in his allegations. The surveillance included conversations recorded in the office used by Dr. King and at his Atlanta home.
As part of that transaction, the judge in the case – currently dead along with Mr. Lee – ordered a file that had been sealed for 50 years until January 31, 2027.
Martin downplayed the importance of his request and argued that he was asking the court to hand over materials for “about a year to nine months.”
“The record has remained protected from the public for a long enough long,” he added.
Audra DS Birch We donated a report from Hollywood, Florida. Rick Rojas From Atlanta Maggie Harberman From New York.
