RFK Jr. Lied to Congress About Vaccines, New Reports Indicate
Newly obtained documents suggest Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. may have misled lawmakers during his 2025 Senate confirmation hearings about the purpose of a 2019 trip to Samoa, according to reporting from The Associated Press and The Guardian.
During his confirmation hearings before the Senate Finance Committee in January 2025, Kennedy was pressed about the trip, which took place months before a measles outbreak in Samoa that sickened more than 5,700 people and killed 83, most of them children under 5. Kennedy told lawmakers at the time, "I went there; nothing to do with vaccines. I went there to introduce a medical informatics system that would digitalize records in Samoa and make health delivery much more efficient." The following day, he added, "My purpose in going down there had nothing to do with vaccines."
What the New Documents Show
According to the AP and The Guardian, the outlets obtained letters Kennedy wrote in 2019 to then-Samoan Prime Minister Tuilaʻepa Saʻilele Malielegaoi on behalf of Children's Health Defense, the anti-vaccine organization he led at the time. The letters reportedly indicate Kennedy's visit was connected to studying the use of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine in the Pacific island nation, directly contradicting his sworn testimony that the trip had nothing to do with vaccines.
Kennedy was not under oath during the hearings themselves, though it remains illegal to knowingly make false statements to Congress. Legal experts told the AP that if lawmakers choose to act on the discrepancy, Kennedy's statements could become grounds for further hearings or other congressional action, though such steps are considered unlikely given that Republicans currently control Congress and are broadly aligned with the Trump administration.
HHS Pushes Back Firmly
A spokesperson for HHS disputed the characterization of the documents in a statement to The Guardian, saying, "Secretary Kennedy's visit to Samoa in 2019 was unrelated to vaccines." In a separate written statement, the department went further, saying, "Any claim or insinuation based on these letters that Secretary Kennedy lied under oath or to Congress is not only false but outright defamatory."
A Confirmation Process Marked by Scrutiny From the Start
Kennedy's path to becoming health secretary was contentious from the outset. A longtime figure in the anti-vaccine movement before entering politics, he faced pointed questioning from lawmakers in both parties during his hearings, many of whom cited years of public statements in which he had expressed skepticism about vaccine safety.
During the hearings, Kennedy told the committee, "News reports claim I am anti-vaccine…I am not," a statement Democratic senators challenged by citing his own past remarks, including a 2023 comment in which he said, "There's no vaccine that is safe and effective."
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a former law school classmate of Kennedy's, told him directly during the hearings, "Frankly you frighten people," while asking him to commit to never falsely claiming vaccines are unsafe. Kennedy ultimately won confirmation after pledging to lawmakers that he would maintain existing vaccine policies, commitments he has since moved to change in various ways since taking office.
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