A major online database of JFK assassination records is suing President Joe Biden and the National Archives in an effort to uncover all remaining details about the former president’s murder that have been kept secret for decades. The lawsuit comes after Biden delayed the release of the files.
NBC reported that the remaining secret files on the fourth assassination of a U.S. president are among the most sensitive in the U.S. government. The mysterious details surrounding JFK’s assassination still draw debunkers and truth-seekers almost 60 years later.
The suit alleges that Biden defied a legal deadline by delaying the release of some 16,000 records, the last batch of JFK documents to be made public under a 1992 law.
All of those documents were legally required to be revealed by October 2017, but then-President Donald Trump delayed the release of some until October 2021, as reported by the Washington Post. When Biden faced Trump’s deadline, he delayed it again to Dec. 15, 2022.
In the complaint filing, the Mary Ferrell Foundation, a large database of primary source material on the 1963 assassination, says Biden’s delay and the National Archives’ compliance with it violated requirements of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992.
“It’s high time that the government got its act together and obeyed the spirit and the letter of the law,” said Jefferson Morley, vice president of the Mary Ferrell Foundation, adding, “This is about our history and our right to know it.”
Historians, activists and Kennedy family members alike expressed support for the lawsuit to NBC.
“It’s bizarre. It’s been almost 60 years since my uncle’s death,” said Robert Kennedy Jr. “What are they hiding?”
Among JFK aficionados, the documents aren’t widely thought to hold new bombshells or smoking guns, NBC reported. Instead, they are expected to reveal secret Cold War operations and details of then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy’s anti-Mafia crusade, which preceded his own assassination.
