Trump Administration Releases Documents on Martin Luther King Jr.

The Trump administration on Monday made public a vast trove of documents from the investigation into the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in keeping with President Trump’s executive order demanding their release.

The release of the documents, about a quarter-million pages of records posted on the National Archives website, includes notes on the leads pursued by investigators, interviews with people who interacted with the assassin James Earl Ray, and previously unreleased details of interactions with foreign intelligence services during the manhunt for Mr. Ray, said Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, who oversaw review of the documents.

It is not clear if the digitized files contain unflattering details about Dr. King’s personal life. Still, the release comes as Mr. Trump and his staff have sought to divert attention from the backlash on the right after his administration reversed course and did not release more files from the investigation into the death of the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.

The King family has expressed concerns that releasing the records into Dr. King would focus attention on his well-documented sexual indiscretions. They also raised worries about whether doing so would feed a revisionist — negative — view of a man who has come to embody the fight against systemic racism and the call for a robust federal defense of minority groups that Mr. Trump has largely moved to reverse since taking office.

“We recognize that the release of documents concerning the assassination of our father, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., has long been a subject of interest, captivating public curiosity for decades,” they wrote in a statement. “We ask those who engage with the release of these files to do so with empathy, restraint and respect for our family’s continuing grief.”

In March, the Justice Department moved to unseal F.B.I. surveillance records in the King case about two years before their court-ordered release. The request was initially made over the objections of the civil rights organization Dr. King founded.

Ed Martin, who then served as the Trump-appointed interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, cited “strong public interest in understanding the truth about the assassination.”

The request was a reversal for the F.B.I. and the Justice Department, which have blocked or slow-walked the release of investigative files for decades under presidents from both parties. Mr. Trump, who ordered the move, has floated alternative theories about political assassinations, stoking doubts about the role played by the bureau in perpetuating those theories.

“The American people deserve answers decades after the horrific assassination of one of our nation’s great leaders,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement announcing their release.