Trump admin releases MLK files despite family's opposition

Among documents are leads the FBI received after King's assassination and details of the CIA's fixation on King's pivot to international anti-war movements

- Associated Press

The Trump administration on Monday released records of the FBI's surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr., despite opposition from the slain Nobel laureate’s family and the civil rights group that he led until his 1968 assassination.

The digital document dump includes over 240,000 pages of records that had been under a court-imposed seal since 1977, when the FBI first gathered the records and turned them over to the National Archives and Records Administration.

In a lengthy statement released on Monday, King's two living children, Martin III, 67, and Bernice, 62, said their father's killing has been a “captivating public curiosity for decades.”

But the pair emphasised the personal nature of the matter and urged that the files “be viewed within their full historical context.”

The Kings got advance access to the records and had their own teams reviewing them. Those efforts continued even as the government granted public access.