Donald Trump has vowed to release thousands of bombshell documents connected to the assassination of JFK – after the murdered president’s nephew ‘suspended’ his own bid for the Oval Office.
Robert Kennedy Junior, known as RFK Jr, was running as a third-party candidate against the former president and Democrat nominee, Vice-President Kamala Harris – leading to concerns from both parties that he could cost them votes in key battleground states.
However, he announced he was suspending his bid on Friday night before joining Trump on stage in Glendale, Arizona.
John F Kennedy, known by his initials JFK, was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, in 1963 – with the death of the Democrat president becoming a long-running source of conspiracy theories in the decades since.
His brother Robert, RFK Jr’s father, was shot and killed in Los Angeles in 1968 while running to be the Democratic Nominee for that year’s Presidential Election.
Mr Trump said he would establish “a new independent presidential commission on assassination attempts” if re-elected to the White House in November.
He added that the commission would release all files related to JFK’s 1963 assassination, with Sky News reporting many remain under wraps decades after the killing.
In total, four US Presidents have been assassinated while in office. In addition to JFK, others who were killed include Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, and William McKinley.
Several others have faced assassination attempts while either in or while running for office – with Ronald Reagan famously being shot and wounded in 1981 and an attempt on Trump’s own life in Butler, Pennsylvania in July.
Mr Kennedy’s campaign had been harried by a series of bizarre revelations, including the fact he once claimed a worm had eaten part of his brain and confessing to leaving the body of a dead bear in New York’s Central Park.
RFK Jr’s endorsement of Trump has faced criticism from other members of his family – considered to be a solid Democrat dynasty.
Five of Mr Kennedy’s family members issued a statement on Friday calling his support for Mr Trump “a sad ending to a sad story”.
“We want an America filled with hope and bound together by a shared vision of a brighter future, a future defined by individual freedom, economic promise and national pride,” read the statement, which his sister Kerry Kennedy posted on X, formerly Twitter.
“We believe in Harris and [Democratic Vice-Presidential Candidate Tim] Walz. Our brother Bobby’s decision to endorse Trump today is a betrayal of the values that our father and our family hold most dear.”
