10,000 pages of records about Robert F. Kennedy's 1968 assassination are released, on Trump's order

About 10,000 pages of records related to the 1968 assassination of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy were released on Friday, continuing the disclosure of national secrets ordered by US President Donald Trump.

Kennedy was fatally shot on June 5, 1968, at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles moments after giving a speech celebrating his victory in California's Democratic presidential primary.

His assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, was convicted of first-degree murder and is serving life in prison.

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The files included pictures of handwritten notes by the gunman.

"RFK must be disposed of like his brother was," was written on the outside of an empty envelope with the return address from the district director of the Internal Revenue Service in Los Angeles.

The National Archives and Records Administration posted 229 files containing the pages to its public website.

Many files related to the assassination had been previously released, but others had not been digitised and sat for decades in federal government storage facilities.

Nearly 60 years after the assassination, "the American people will, for the first time, have the opportunity to review the federal government's investigation thanks to the leadership of President Trump," Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, said in a statement.

The release of the files shines "a long-overdue light on the truth," Gabbard added.

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The release comes a month after unredacted files related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy were disclosed.

Those documents gave curious readers more details about Cold War-era covert US operations in other nations but did not initially lend credence to long-circulating conspiracy theories about who killed JFK.

Trump, a Republican, has championed in the name of transparency the release of documents related to high-profile assassinations and investigations.

But he's also been deeply suspicious for years of the government's intelligence agencies, and his administration's release of once-hidden files opens the door for additional public scrutiny and questioning about the conclusions and operations of institutions such as the CIA and the FBI.

Trump signed an executive order in January calling for the release of governmental documents related to the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., who were killed within two months of each other.

Lawyers for Kennedy's killer have said for decades that he is unlikely to reoffend or pose a danger to society, and in 2021, a parole board deemed Sirhan suitable for release. But Gov. Gavin Newson rejected the decision in 2022, keeping him in state prison.

In 2023, a different panel denied him release, saying he still lacks insight into what caused him to shoot Kennedy.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a son of the New York senator who now serves as health and human services secretary, commended Trump and Gabbard for their "courage" and "dogged efforts" to release the files.

"Lifting the veil on the RFK papers is a necessary step toward restoring trust in American government," the health secretary said in a statement.

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