Trump releases new files on RFK assassination
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The Trump administration announced Friday that it has begun to release thousands of pages of classified documents on Democratic Sen. Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 assassination — a move that is almost certain to fuel renewed speculation about a pivotal moment in Los Angeles and U.S. history.
President Trump’s release of the files is backed by the senator’s son, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has long believed there may have been a second gunman, and insisted his father’s convicted assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, might not have fired the fatal shots.
“Lifting the veil on the RFK papers is a necessary step toward restoring trust in American government,” Kennedy said in a statement. “I commend President Trump for his courage and his commitment to transparency. I’m grateful also to Tulsi Gabbard for her dogged efforts to root out and declassify these documents.”
Just ahead of the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Sen. Robert F.
Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated shortly after midnight on June 5, 1968, at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after celebrating his victory in the California presidential primary.
Soon after the shots rang out, and scenes of chaos were captured by television cameras and broadcast around the world, Sirhan, a 24-year-old Palestinian immigrant, was arrested.
Sirhan was captured at the scene with a .22-caliber handgun in his hand. He had also written a manifesto calling for Kennedy’s death.
“Kennedy must be assassinated June 5, 1968,” he wrote.
The date marked the first anniversary of the Six-Day War between Israel and its neighbors Egypt, Syria and Jordan. Israel won decisively, capturing a swath of territory including the Gaza Strip, West Bank and the Old City of Jerusalem.
But Sirhan’s gun held only eight bullets and new evidence has emerged over the years that suggests as many as 13 shots may have been fired that night.
Robert Kennedy Jr. , who was 14 years old when his father was assassinated, met with Sirhan inside a California correctional facility in 2017 and subsequently advocated for his release to the parole board. In recent years, Kennedy has voiced the theory that Thane Eugene Caesar, a security guard, killed his father.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said in a statement Friday that about 10,000 pages of previously classified records on the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. “sat collecting dust in facilities across the federal government for decades.” Now they have been scanned and uploaded by the National Archives, she said, and they will be available to view online, with limited redactions for privacy reasons, at archives.gov/rfk.
President Trump released 80,000 unredacted pages on the assassination of John F. Kennedy more than 60 years ago.
“Nearly 60 years after the tragic assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, the American people will, for the first time, have the opportunity to review the federal government’s investigation thanks to the leadership of President Trump,” Gabbard said in a statement. “My team is honored that the President entrusted us to lead the declassification efforts and to shine a long-overdue light on the truth.”
Tim Tate, an author and documentary filmmaker who was co-author of the 2018 book “The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy: Crime, Conspiracy and Cover-Up: A New Investigation,” began to pore over the newly released documents Friday. After reviewing 60 of the released 229 files, he said, he had not found any material that added significantly to the historic record.
“Thus far, there’s nothing which amounts even to a couple of beans, let alone a hill of beans,” said Tate, who believes Sirhan did not shoot Kennedy. The vast majority of the files he had perused so far were duplicates of FBI and Department of Justice files in the California State Archives, he said, or letters to the Department of Justice or White House from ordinary citizens complaining about the cost of a trial, communism and Jews.
“But that could change,” Tate said, noting he still had thousands of pages to review. “This is a huge dump of files.”
The trove of documents includes several pictures of Sirhan’s rambling, handwritten notes about Kennedy.
“My determination to eliminate R.F.K. is becoming more of an unshakable obsession,” he scrawled in a note dated May 18, 1968.
“RFK must be assassinated,” he scribbled over and over again. “Kennedy must fall. Kennedy must fall.”
Dan Moldea, who was author of the 1995 book “The Killing of Robert F. Kennedy,” said he did not anticipate that anything in the files would fundamentally change the case against Sirhan.
“I can say, without even seeing a single document,” Moldea said, “none of it has any impact on the fact that Sirhan did it and he did it alone.”
Tate, who has spent more than a quarter-century methodically scrutinizing RFK assassination documents, said he was astounded that the newly released trove even existed.
“All files were meant to have been transferred to California State Archives between 1988 and 1990,” he said. “And that included the FBI files, so federal files as well as LAPD, LADA and LA Sheriff’s Office files.”
No matter what the files contained, Tate said, they should have been disclosed to the various lawyers representing Sirhan over the last half century — including his current lawyer, Angela Berry, who has represented Sirhan in parole board hearings.
Sirhan was denied parole in 2023. Two years earlier, he had been recommended for release from prison by a two-person parole panel. But that decision was reversed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, who argued in a Times op-ed that Sirhan remained a threat to the public.
“As a matter of procedure, she has, in my view, a very good claim to malfeasance, because these files were withheld from her,” Tate said of Berry.
The withholding of files, Tate said, could amount to a Brady violation, referring to the rule that requires prosecutors to disclose material exculpatory information in the government’s possession to the defense.
“Whether that evidence turns out to be exculpatory or not,” he argued, “is not something for the government, or, in this case, LAPD and LADA’s office to decide.”
Berry, who represents Sirhan pro bono, said Friday she and her team had not yet had time to review the files, but it was unclear whether the documents could help them make the case for a Brady violation.
“Unless there’s some sort of statement from the government that they had turned this over to the defense before it was then classified, it’s going to be hard for us to develop a Brady argument,” Berry said. “We don’t know if some of these documents that are now being released were given to defense counsel and then they were sealed, or if they were never given to defense counsel — and there’s no way that we could know that, because there’s no original trial defense file around anymore.”
Even if law enforcement didn’t give the files to the prosecution, Berry said, that could be a Brady violation.
“But that’s going to be a tough argument for us to make, unless we can demonstrate that it was never given to the defense,” she said. “Now, if these documents reveal that they were classified immediately and never disseminated, that helps us to make the Brady violation. But we just don’t know the timing of when it was classified and when it was turned over. “
Trump pledged during the 2024 election campaign that he would fully release previously classified records on the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Days after taking office, Trump signed an executive order declassifying the records, and last month his administration released a cache of un-redacted classified documents related to the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy.
The 10,000 pages of files released Friday on Robert F. Kennedy is just the first batch of files related to his assassination.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in a news release Friday that agents discovered an additional trove of 50,000 pages during searches of CIA and FBI warehouses for documents that had not been turned over to the National Archives. According to the office, agencies are working to make those documents available to the public and will continue searching government facilities for more records.
Tate said that he was surprised to hear of newly discovered CIA files.
“The CIA has no business in this,” he said, noting the assassination was a state crime handled by the LAPD and county sheriff, although the FBI did run its own investigation and liaised closely with L.A. law enforcement.
“There is absolutely no reason for the CIA to have been involved,” Tate said, noting the agency deals with foreign intelligence gathering. “If there are CIA files, either it’s just them keeping tabs on what was being said, or there is something more substantive.”
“What needs to happen is what has never happened — and that is an honest, transparent, official investigation into the assassination of Robert Kennedy,” Tate said.
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