Newly obtained emails undermine RFK Jr.’s testimony about 2019 Samoa trip before measles outbreak
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. repeated the same answer during more than two days of questioning during Senate confirmation hearings last year.
He said his 2019 trip to Samoa before a devastating measles outbreak was under close scrutiny. “It has nothing to do with vaccines”
Documents obtained by The Guardian and Associated Press refute this statement. The emails, sent by U.S. Embassy and United Nations staff, provide for the first time an inside look at how Kennedy’s trip came to be and include concurrent statements suggesting concerns about vaccine safety motivated the visit.
The documents raised concerns from at least one U.S. senator that the lawyer and activist who now oversees America’s health policy lied to Congress during the visit. Samoan officials later said: Kennedy’s trip increased reliability With the participation of anti-vaccination activists before the measles epidemic that sickened thousands of people 83 killedmostly children under 5 years old.
The revelations, which emerged as measles outbreaks broke out across the United States, build on previous criticism that Kennedy’s anti-vaccine record made him ineligible for the vaccine. serve as health secretaryA role in which he worked to radically reshape immunization policy and the public’s perception of vaccines.
The newly released documents also reveal previously unknown details of the trip, including how a U.S. Embassy employee helped Kennedy’s team connect with Samoan officials. Kennedy, who then ran the anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense, did not publicly discuss the trip at the time, but has since said his “purpose” for going there was not related to vaccines and “I finally made speeches “Some people I never thought I would meet.” In addition to meeting with anti-vaccine activists, Kennedy met with Samoan officials, including the then-health secretary, who told NBC News he shared Kennedy’s view that vaccines were unsafe. Kennedy said he went there to promote the medical data system.
The U.S. State Department turned over the emails, many of which were heavily redacted, as a result of an open records lawsuit filed with the help of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
The remarks come at a time when Kennedy, as President Donald Trump’s health secretary, is using his power and enormous public influence to overhaul federal vaccination guidance and cast doubt on the safety and importance of vaccines. including measles vaccine. Meanwhile, measles outbreaks in many U.S. states have left the country in dire straits, undoing decades of success in eliminating the highly contagious disease. On the brink of losing their qualifying status. The latest numbers show more than 875 people have been infected in South Carolina.
‘It has nothing to do with the vaccine’
Kennedy answered questions about his trip to Samoa during two Senate confirmation hearings for his appointment as health secretary.
“My purpose in going there had nothing to do with vaccines,” he said during questioning at a Jan. 30, 2025 hearing by Democratic Sen. Edward Markey of Massachusetts.
“Didn’t the trip have anything to do with vaccines, as you told my Senate Finance colleagues yesterday?” Markey asked later.
“It has nothing to do with vaccines,” Kennedy replied.
Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, one of the senators who asked Kennedy about Samoa during his confirmation hearings, responded to the recordings by saying, “Kennedy’s anti-vaccine agenda is directly responsible for the deaths of innocent children.”
“Lying to Congress about his role in the deadly measles outbreak in Samoa underscores the danger he now poses to families across America,” Wyden said in an email. “He and his allies will be held accountable.”
Taylor Harvey, a spokeswoman for Wyden and other Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee, said making false statements to Congress is a crime and that “Casual, unsubstantiated denials by Congress will not be swept under the rug.”
A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to questions sent by email and text message.
Kennedy said his visit did not influence people’s decisions about whether to vaccinate themselves or their children.
“I have nothing to do with people in Samoa who don’t vaccinate. I didn’t tell anyone not to vaccinate,” he told the 2023 documentary “Shot in the Arm.” “You know, I didn’t go there for any reason.”
A halted vaccination program
Anti-vaccine activists in the United States became interested in Samoa in July 2018. two babies died After being injected with an improperly prepared tainted measles, mumps and rubella or MMR vaccine. The government suspended the vaccination program for 10 months until the following April. Vaccination rates have fallen.
Records show that Kennedy’s Children’s Health Advocacy group tried to connect Kennedy with the Samoan prime minister at a time when no vaccine was available. A January 2019 email from the group’s then-president, Lyn Redwood, to Samoan activist Edwin Tamasese, asked him to “please share this letter with the Honorable Prime Minister Tuilaepa Aiono Sailele Malielegaoi for Robert Kennedy Jr.”
About two months later, Tamasese wrote back to Redwood with a memo to Kennedy and others.
“Hope all is well, logistics have been organized with the Prime Minister’s office and I wanted to confirm how many people will be coming? Also just wanted to confirm the costs of the visit etc and how this will be handled,” he wrote.
Tamasese immediately forwarded the message chain to the personal and official email accounts of Benjamin Harding, who worked at the US Embassy in Apia, Samoa.
“I just sent this. I expect an answer tomorrow because I think it’s Sunday there. Your letter looks good,” Tamasese said to Harding.
Although the U.S. Embassy has acknowledged in the past that an unnamed employee attended an event with Kennedy and anti-vaccine activists while in Samoa, records show Harding was not a passive participant: He helped arrange Kennedy’s visit and connected Kennedy’s delegation with Samoan government officials.
In an email sent to Harding’s personal email address on May 23, 2019, a staff member from the Samoan Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade wrote: “Hello Benj, I am currently awaiting the official biographies of Mr. Kennedy and Dr. Graven to be forwarded to the Honorable Prime Minister and the Honorable Minister of Health for reference purposes. Please note that this must be sent along with our official letter when requesting an appointment.”
Harding referred the department’s request to Dr. Forwarded to Michael Graven.
Harding did not respond to messages seeking comment sent to several listed email addresses, social media accounts, a phone number registered to her parents and a public mailbox at a company she lists as her current workplace on her LinkedIn profile.
Embassy staff received a tip about Harding’s participation in the trip from Sheldon Yett, then the representative of Pacific island countries to UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund.
“We now understand that the Prime Minister invited Robert Kennedy and his team to Samoa to investigate the safety of the vaccine,” Yett wrote in an email to a New Zealand-based embassy employee on May 22, 2019. “The staff member in question appears to have had a role in facilitating this.”
Two days later a senior employee of the embassy in Apia wrote: Scott Brownthen the Republican US president’s ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa warned him about Kennedy’s trip and Harding’s involvement.
“The real reason Kennedy came is to raise awareness about vaccines, more specifically (from his perspective) some of the health problems associated with vaccination,” embassy official Antone Greubel wrote. “It seems our Benjamin Harding played a personal role in bringing him here.” Greubel wrote that he told Harding to “cease and desist any further interest in this trip,” although the rest of the sentence was redacted.
Yett did not respond to questions but said in an email that “it was a very bleak time in Samoa.”
brown, who Running for U.S. Senate in New HampshireHe refused to comment. Greubel referred questions to a press office at the State Department. A State Department spokesman did not answer questions about the records, saying that as general practice they do not comment on personnel matters.
According to his LinkedIn account, Harding left the embassy in July 2020, although he remained in Samoa.
Kennedy eventually visited in June 2019. While there he and his wife, actor Cheryl Hines, A photo was taken while greeting the Prime Minister During the Independence Day celebration. He also met with government health officials as well as a group of people who cast doubt on vaccines, including Tamasese.
The Guardian and AP found no record of Kennedy openly discussing the purpose of his trip until after the measles outbreak. in 2021 he wrote He said he went there to discuss “the launch of a medical informatics system” to track drug safety. He said Samoan officials were “curious to measure health outcomes following the ‘natural experiment’ created by the national pause on vaccinations.”
He has since said his reason for going to Samoa was not related to vaccines.
Redwood, the former head of Children’s Health Defense who provided early support to Samoa, is now an employee at HHS and is reportedly working on vaccine safety.
During the measles epidemic, Kennedy wrote a four-page letter to the prime minister of Samoa, suggesting that measles infections were caused by a defective vaccine and voicing other unsubstantiated theories.
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This story was reported and published jointly by The Guardian and The Associated Press.
