Who Killed JFK? What Trump Document Release Could Reveal 

President Donald Trump has promised to release the remaining classified documents related to the assassination of John F. Kennedy, once again stirring public interest in one of the most debated events in American history.

Speaking at his Sunday rally in Washington, D.C., Trump declared, “In the coming days, we are going to make public remaining records related to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert Kennedy, as well as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.”

This announcement comes more than 61 years after Kennedy’s death, an event that continues to captivate the public and fuel widespread conspiracy theories.

A poll released in 2022 showed approximately half the country believed there was a larger conspiracy involved in the president’s murder, rather than the official narrative of a lone gunman.

Following the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act passed by Congress in 1992, thousands of documents have become publicly accessible.

The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration said that more than 97 percent of the millions of documents it has collected about the assassination have now been released to the public.

Newsweek spoke to three experts on the assassination about what potential revelations might be contained in the final files: two who argue there was a conspiracy and one who believes the official suspect acted alone.

The Lone Gunman

On November 22, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald, a former U.S. Marine and defector to the Soviet Union, fired three shots from a sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository, striking President Kennedy as his motorcade passed through Dealey Plaza in Dallas.

Two days later, nightclub owner Jack Ruby fatally shot Oswald while he was in police custody, ensuring he would never stand trial.

The Warren Commission’s 1964 report concluded Oswald acted alone, but skepticism has persisted. Some theorists have questioned whether the CIA or other organizations had any connection with Oswald or involvement in the killing.

Jefferson Morley, an author, former Washington Post journalist, and editor of the blog JFKFacts, rejects the lone gunman theory and argues that evidence points to a broader conspiracy.

Speaking to Newsweek, Morley cited recently released records that he said contradict aspects of the official story, including discrepancies in medical evidence and classified CIA files on Oswald.

“The records released by the JFK Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) and Presidents Trump and Biden demonstrate the official theory of a ‘lone gunman’ is contradicted by the latest medical evidence, by the CIA’s pre-assassination Oswald file, by the dissent of three members of the Warren Commission, and by the private beliefs of presidents Truman and Johnson,” Morley told Newsweek.

“The official story about the causes of JFK’s death is no longer credible, if it ever was,” he said.

Similarly, John M. Newman, a former intelligence officer and professor of political science at James Madison University, told Newsweek he believed Oswald was manipulated by larger forces.

Newman was one of the experts called to testify before the ARRB in the 1990s and has written several books about Kennedy and the assassination

Newman contends that Oswald had initially been used as a mole by Moscow and then, in 1963, by Americans.

“My books tell us less about the shooters than who was behind the assassination and how they got away with it,” Newman said.

Following the Evidence

Not everyone agrees that Oswald’s actions were part of a conspiracy.

Gerald Posner, an investigative journalist and author of Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK, argues that the evidence points conclusively to Oswald as the sole assassin.

Posner’s work, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History in 1994, challenges conspiracy theories and supports the findings of the Warren Commission.

“By keeping files for over 60 years, it’s natural that the general public would think, well, they must be keeping files because they have something to hide,” Posner told Newsweek.

However, after years of meticulous research, he concluded, “Lee Harvey Oswald was, in fact, the assassin, did kill the president, and that there was not a conspiracy behind it.”

Posner believes that Oswald acted independently, but did not dispute that there were other people who wanted to kill Kennedy.

“I think there were plenty of conspiracies, brewing against Jack Kennedy,” he said, “The question always is, when a president is killed, did the groups that wanted him dead or might have been conspiring to kill him, was that their shooter? Or did that person, in this case Oswald, beat everybody else to him?

“That’s what I think happened… Oswald got there first. The mafia? Maybe. The KGB? Castro? They would have all pinned a medal on him. He just wasn’t their boy,” Posner said.

What Could The Documents Reveal?

Trump’s pledge to release the remaining JFK assassination records has rekindled debate over what these files might contain. The experts agree that the documents are more likely to reveal embarrassing details about intelligence failures rather than concrete evidence of a conspiracy.

Posner speculated that some records might show the CIA knew Oswald, who had defected to the Soviet Union four years prior, was a potentially dangerous individual but failed to alert the FBI, even as he worked in a building along the president’s motorcade route.

“I think there will be information there that could be embarrassing for the CIA, not in terms of a plot to kill the president,” Posner explained.

He also suggested that the release of these files might finally convince some Americans that Oswald acted alone, provided there is no “smoking gun” for a conspiracy among the documents.

Morley, however, sees the unreleased files as a potential treasure trove of information that could undermine the lone gunman theory.

“The CIA has classified the details of 44 documents which concern a secret CIA operation (code name AMSPELL) that targeted the leftist Fair Play for Cuba Committee (and Lee Harvey Oswald) for propaganda and political action purposes in the months before JFK was killed,” Morley said.

He argues that these records could expose that the CIA deceived and obstructed the investigations conducted by the House Select Committee on Assassinations in the 1970s.

Newman also expects the files to shed light on Oswald’s connections to the CIA and other intelligence agencies.

“You can bet on new revelations,” Newman said, though he cautioned that he did not believe they would alter the historical consensus on the event.

“Not until the 6 million pages of records already released are well studied—which they are not—otherwise the new documents will disappoint most everyone,” he said.

The Legacy of a Murdered President

The assassination of President Kennedy remains a defining moment in American history, one that continues to resonate six decades later.

For Newman, the enduring fascination stems from a sense that the full truth has never been disclosed. “Because our nation is still haunted by the sense that we have never been told the truth about what happened,” he said.

Morley echoed this sentiment, stating, “Until Americans get a credible explanation of the violent end of Kennedy’s liberal presidency, they will be captivated by the ongoing cover-up and will support all efforts to expose the truth.”

Posner, while not believing there was a conspiracy, agreed that transparency is essential.

“The American public has the right to know what the government knows about the murder of a president,” he said.

However, he remains skeptical that the documents will satisfy those who fervently believe in a conspiracy. “There will be people who will never believe that, and even if the files are released, if they don’t prove [a conspiracy], they still will be looking for that information somewhere else.”