Trump administration released FBI records on MLK Jr. despite his family’s opposition

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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., center, and Rev. Ralph Abernathy, third from left, share a laugh outside court in Atlanta, Ga., Oct. 25, 1960. Others are unidentified. Andrew Young is seen at center, facing right. (AP Photo)

This story was updated on Tuesday, July 22 at 9:11 a.m.

The Trump administration has released records of the FBI’s surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr., despite opposition from the slain Nobel laureate’s family and the civil rights group that he led until his 1968 assassination.

The digital document dump includes more than 240,000 pages of records that had been under a court-imposed seal since 1977, when the FBI first gathered the records and turned them over to the National Archives and Records Administration.