The 15-Day and 45-Day Countdown
- Within 15 Days (Feb. 7, 2025):
The Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and the Attorney General (AG), in coordination with the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and the Counsel to the President,must present a plan for the full release of JFK assassination files. - Within 45 Days (Mar. 9, 2025):
The DNI and AG willreview RFK and MLK assassination records and submit a plan for their immediate release.
To date, no explicit standard has been provided for how agencies will balance their duty to national security against the Executive Order’s directive for unfettered disclosure. The question still lingers: Will these agencies return with new redactions under the same “identifiable harm” justification that kept them secret all these decades?
Trump’s Stated Rationale
President Trump’s own words in the Executive Order shed some light on his motivation:
“The continued withholding of these records is not consistent with the public interest and the release of these records is long overdue.”
“I have determined that the release of all records in the Federal Government’s possession pertaining to each of those assassinations is also in the public interest.”
He underscores the public’s right to transparency, a right codified in the JFK Records Act, even as prior administrations—including his own in 2017 and 2018—affirmed agencies’ national security arguments.
