Martin Luther King Jr’s family have emotional response to Donald Trump’s decision to release secret files on icon’s assassination

Martin Luther King Jr’s family has issued an emotional statement after Donald Trump declared that he would release the files on his assassination.

The relatives of one of the moist influential men in politics has released a statement, which comes after JFK’s grandson also shared his response to the release of classified assassination files.

Now that he is the 47th president of the United States, Trump has signed several executive orders.

Two of those orders included releasing thousands of classified governmental documents about the 1963 assassination of John F Kennedy, as well as the 1968 assassination of MLK.

While Kennedy was shot as his motorcade drove past the Texas School Book Depository building, by 24-year-old assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, MLK was murdered by James Earl Ray in Memphis.

Just two days after Kennedy was killed, Oswald was shot and killed by nightclub owner Jack Ruby during a jail transfer.

JFK was murdered during a tour around Houston (National Archive/Newsmakers)

"More than 50 years after the assassinations of President John F Kennedy, Senator Robert F Kennedy, and the Rev Dr Martin Luther King, Jr, the federal government has not released to the public all of its records related to those events," the executive order stated.

It added: "Their families and the American people deserve transparency and truth. It is in the national interest to finally release all records related to these assassinations without delay."

JFK’s grandson wasn’t pleased with the order, and took to social media to slate it.

Jack Schlossberg wrote on X on Thursday (23 January): "JFK conspiracy theories -

The truth is a lot sadder than the myth - a tragedy that didn’t need to happen. Not part of an inevitable grand scheme."

He continued: "Declassification is using JFK as a political prop, when he’s not here to punch back.

"There’s nothing heroic about it."

Now, MLK’s family have come out with their own take on the soon-to-be released files.

“For us, the assassination of our father is a deeply personal family loss that we have endured over the last 56 years. We hope to be provided the opportunity to review the files as a family prior to its public release,” the family said.

MLK's family have spoken out (Bettman/Getty)

King’s family has always been focused on an investigation into the assassination, as they want everything to be uncovered, Fox Atlanta reported.

MLK’s assassination came after the FBI investigated his party, and came to the conclusion that there were several members within his inner circle who were Communists.

An analysis from the FBI 23 days before the murder stated that two of his former aides were Communist Party members, and eight others had Communist affiliations.

The agency claimed that King and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference were ‘made to order’ for the Communist mission, but did not uphold his public beliefs behind closed doors.

A Black minister attended a minister training workshop hosted by King, and he then ‘expressed his disgust with the behind-the-scene [sic] drinking, fornication and homosexuality that went on at the conference’.

The FBI claimed: “Throughout the ensuing years and until this date, King has continued to carry on his sexual aberrations secretly while holding himself out to public view as a moral leader of religious conviction.”