US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order declassifying documents related to the assassination of the 35th US President John F. Kennedy in 1963 and the assassination of black rights activist in the US Martin Luther King in 1968, according to a broadcast of the signing.

“This is a big event, many people have been waiting for it for years, decades. And everything will be disclosed,” Trump said after signing an executive order to that effect.

The assassination of John F. Kennedy’s brother Senator and politician Robert Kennedy in 1968 will also be declassified. His son Robert Kennedy Jr. is an associate of Trump.

Although US law required that data on the assassination of John F. Kennedy be declassified in its entirety by 2017, US intelligence agencies both Trump and previous US President Joe Biden granted additional time to assess whether declassifying the remaining data could harm US interests and international relations, the published executive order noted.

“I have now determined that the continued redaction and withholding of information from records relating to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy is not in the public interest, and the release of these records is long overdue. And while no law of Congress mandates the release of information relating to the assassinations of Senator Robert F. Kennedy and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I have determined that the release of all records in the possession of the federal government relating to each of these assassinations is also in the public interest,” Trump said in the executive order.

U.S. government agencies have 15 days from the signing of the executive order to provide the president with a plan to fully declassify data on the assassination of the 35th president and 45 days to review the data and provide a plan to release documents on the assassinations of King and Robert Kennedy.

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