Joyce OrlandoUSA TODAY NETWORK
- The JFK files were released on Monday night, but historians are saying it will take time to go through all 80,000 pages.
- President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, so far documents hold up the Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.
- Six months before his assassination, Kennedy came to Nashville.
Government files related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy have been released by the Trump administration, and so far it's just a lot to process.
In a directive from President Donald Trump, 80,000 pages of unredacted files associated with the widely popular Democratic president were released this week.
The release of the unredacted files is part of Trump's day one executive order in January, which aimed at fully releasing government documents related to the assassinations of Kennedy, his brother and presidential candidate Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, D-N.Y., and civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.
With that many pages, historians are beginning the slow process of reading and interpreting the pages they, conspiracy theorists and the public have waited decades for.
The anticipation of some bombshell reveal in the documents, might just fizzle out though.
What are in the JFK files released by Trump?
James Johnston, author of "Murder, Inc.: The CIA under John F. Kennedy" told USA TODAY that he wasn’t expecting any bombshells.
“If it was going to embarrass the agency or tell a different story, they wouldn't have turned them over to the National Archives in the first place,” said Johnston, who was a staff member of the congressional Church Committee that investigated the CIA in 1975. “And if they were withholding them before, I’m guessing they would continue to withhold them.”
Historians were quick to say that it would take time to comb through all the documents to see if there were any significant shifts in what has been reported to have happened in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.
While it is expected to take some time to go through all of the documents, so far none have revealed any changes to the long-standing findings that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone and was the one to fire the bullet that killed Kennedy, according to reports from USA TODAY.
You can find out more about the analysis of the documents so far at usatoday.com.
Where can I read the JFK files?
The National Archives and Records Administration is the keeper of the documents and have them posted online on their websitehere.
When were the JFK files released?
The National Archives posted them Monday night with this statement:
“In accordance with PresidentDonald Trump’s directive of March 17, 2025, all records previously withheld for classificationthat are part of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection are released.”
Thedocumentswere released just before 7 p.m., but not all the pages are available via the National Archives just yet.
“As the records continue to be digitized, they will be posted to this page,” the National Archives said, suggesting that not all of the documents were being released on Tuesday in digital form.
John F. Kennedy visit to Tennessee held parallels to Dallas
Before being elected to the highest office in the land, Kennedy made several visits to Tennessee as a senator and eventually came back during his presidency in 1963, months before his assassination in Dallas, Texas.
Kennedy was well-known for his speeches and spoke on multiple occasions across the Volunteer State, from praising the Tennessee Valley Authority and Oak Ridge's path in nuclear energy to coming for a visit to Vanderbilt just six months before his death.
A 2013 article in The Tennessean, looked back on Kennedy's visit and some of the parallels between his Nashville visit and Dallas. The 35th president arrived in Music City in a convertible following a route printed in the paper.
Along with his visit, came tension among Tennessee Democrats as Kennedy started to float his ideas for his 1964 re-election campaign. Similar tension was happening amongst Texas Democrats during Kennedy's visit six months later, read the article.
"It could have happened that morning (in Nashville), no doubt about it," said John Jay Hooker, an attorney and Kennedy family friend who attended the 35th president's speech at Vanderbilt University's Dudley Field on May 18, 1963.
The visit to Tennessee went smoothly despite these factors, no one knew it would be his last visit to the Volunteer state before his assassination on Nov. 22, 1963.
"He had the facility to convince you that one man can make a difference and every man should try," Hooker reminisced in the article. "That has been the guiding light of my life."
