President Donald J. Trump signed Executive Order 14176, Declassification of Records Concerning the Assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on January 23, 2025. Records relating to the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy that have been released will be available on this webpage and will be added on a rolling basis.
The National Archives’ Role in Fulfilling Executive Order 14176
In accordance with United States law, it is the responsibility of the National Archives to serve as the final repository of the records of the United States federal government, and make those records available to the American people. Many of the records related to the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy were previously transferred to the National Archives from federal agencies but were not available to the public. The National Archives is working closely with other federal agencies across the Executive Branch to ensure that any remaining records are identified and transferred to the National Archives as soon as possible.
2025 Release
The table below (follow link) displays the file names and links to all of the documents released related to the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy.
For records released on April 18, 2025, researchers may encounter a combination of black and white and colored scans. Here’s why: black and white scans were used in order to more efficiently facilitate the prioritized interagency review process. However, some pages were not legible in black and white. When the National Archives encountered unreadable pages, they were replaced with legible color scans.
- April 18, 2025 – 7:30 AM EDT Release: 10,185 pages (229 PDF files)
- May 7, 2025 – 7:00 PM EDT Release: 64,686 pages (1,499 PDF files and 17 MP3 audio files)
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More than 10,000 pages of previously classified documents related to the assassinated of Robert F. Kennedy have been released.
The trove of files about the 1968 assassination, published at President Trump’s directive, were previously sitting in storage at the National Archives, according to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.
“Lifting the veil on the RFK papers is a necessary step toward restoring trust in American government,” said the late senator’s son, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
“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.”
The files, unlike the assassination files of RFK’s brother President John F. Kennedy, had not been previously digitized and had “sat collecting dust” in government offices for decades, according to the DNI’s office. Another 50,000 pages of files related to RFK’s assassination have also been uncovered, which will soon be made available.
The mass of files was published in accordance with President Trump’s executive order, which called for the federal files related to the assassinations of RFK, JFK and Martin Luther King, Jr. be released to the public.
“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,” Gabbard said.
The New York senator was shot dead by Palestinian immigrant Sirhan Sirhan at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles moments after he claimed victory in California’s pivotal Democratic presidential primary in 1968.
Five others were wounded in the shooting, which sparked decades of conspiracy theories.
Sirhan originally was sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted to life when the California Supreme Court briefly outlawed capital punishment in 1972. California Gov. Gavin Newsom denied his parole in 2022 despite RFK Jr. submitting a letter on Sirhan’s behalf for his release, saying he believed his father would’ve shown Sirhan mercy.