Donald Trump bragged about releasing the Social Security numbers of hundreds of people during his anticlimactic release of the John F. Kennedy assassination files.
“Eighty thousand pages of documents is a lot to sift through,” a reporter said to Trump on Friday. “Can you just tell us who killed Kennedy?”
“Well, you know, I was given the task of releasing that. Many presidents have gone through it, and they haven’t released. And I said, ‘Release.’ We even released Social Security numbers, I didn’t want anything deleted,” Trump replied. “They said, ‘So what about Social Security?’ People long gone.… We gave Social Security, we gave everything. And the rest is for you to look at.”
These Social Security numbers are from potentially hundreds of people who are alive, not “long gone,” as the president wrongly claimed.
One of them, Reagan-era Justice Department attorney and Trump’s own former campaign lawyer Joseph diGenova, was furious about the release of his personal data. “I intend to sue the National Archives,” he told USA Today. “They violated the Privacy Act.”
A former Church Committee staffer also slammed Trump.
“Your Administration doxxed former public servants who staffed 1977-79 congressional investigation by revealing their SSNs. Many are still alive. Completely unnecessary & contributed nothing to JFK assassination understanding,” government accountability lawyer Mark Zaid wrote on X. “I trust you will provide them free credit monitoring.”
The federal government and its agencies are barred from sharing personal records without consent under the Privacy Act of 1974.
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