Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told the United States Senate, twice, under oath, that his 2019 trip to Samoa had 'nothing to do with vaccines.' A newly obtained email from his own colleague, sent before the trip, describes it as a vaccine-related 'mission.' These two things cannot both be true, and only one of them is an email.
What Kennedy Said vs. What His Colleague Wrote
At his Senate confirmation hearings last year, Kennedy was asked about his May 2019 trip to Samoa directly and repeatedly. His answer did not waver. 'I went there, nothing to do with vaccines,' he told Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon. The following day, under questioning from Senator Edward Markey of Massachusetts, he said it again: 'My purpose in going down there had nothing to do with vaccines.' He said the trip was about introducing a 'state-of-the-art' medical informatics system and digitizing health records. That was the purpose, he said. Full stop.
Here is what Dr. Michael Graven, Kennedy's then-colleague and the chief information officer of Children's Health Defense, actually wrote to Samoan officials before the trip. According to records obtained by the Guardian, Graven described the visit as a 'mission' multiple times in a May 13 email. 'The mission involves health informatics evaluation from medical record data from all hospitals and clinics in Samoa to evaluate outcomes associated with the recent discontinuity in vaccinations,' Graven wrote. He also noted that Kennedy personally asked him to join.
Graven was not some rogue actor freelancing his own agenda. He explicitly stated in that email that he was writing 'after discussion with' Kennedy. So either Kennedy sent his colleague to tell Samoan officials the trip was a vaccine-related mission without telling him what it was actually about, or Kennedy knew exactly what they were doing there and lied to the Senate about it. Pick one.
The Backdrop: 83 Children Are Dead
This is not an abstract procedural dispute about Senate testimony. There are actual, irreversible consequences attached to this story.
A few months after Kennedy's visit in May 2019, Samoa was hit by a catastrophic measles outbreak. The Guardian has previously reported that the outbreak sickened thousands of people and killed 83, the overwhelming majority of them children under age five. Vaccination rates on the island were dangerously low at the time, partly due to a government halt on vaccinations following two infant deaths in 2018 caused by a tainted vaccine batch improperly prepared by a nurse.
Samoan officials have since said Kennedy's visit bolstered the credibility of anti-vaccine activists already working the island. Kennedy was chairman and chief legal counsel of Children's Health Defense at the time, a nonprofit organization whose entire reason for existing is anti-vaccine activism. His group had been reaching out to the Samoan government during the vaccination pause, according to emails previously obtained by the Guardian and the Associated Press. Kennedy has long advocated for studies comparing vaccinated and unvaccinated children. Samoa's pause, with its plummeted vaccination rates and intact medical records, would have been exactly the kind of natural experiment his movement wanted.
The Emails Keep Coming, and They Keep Being Bad
This latest revelation from the Guardian is not the first round. Earlier this year, the Guardian and the Associated Press obtained separate State Department emails that also undermined Kennedy's account of the Samoa trip. Those findings prompted two Democratic senators and a House member to say publicly that the reporting showed Kennedy lied to the Senate.
The emails are being released in batches by the State Department as part of an open records lawsuit brought with the assistance of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. Many of the documents are heavily redacted. Which means we are getting pieces of this picture slowly, and each new piece makes Kennedy's version of events look worse. Graven's emails describe him planning to spend weeks visiting hospitals and clinics across Samoa, collecting data and running statistical analyses. That is not someone who came along to help set up a hospital records database. That is someone on a research mission specifically tied to the vaccination gap.
Spokespeople for Kennedy at the Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to the Guardian's requests for comment. Graven himself died in 2022 and cannot be asked about any of it. Convenient for Kennedy. Inconvenient for the truth.
What the Secretary of Health Is Actually Claiming
Kennedy's defense, to the extent one can reconstruct it from his Senate testimony, rests on two pillars. One: the purpose of the trip was a medical informatics system and digital health records. Two: he cannot be blamed for the vaccine hesitancy that followed because, as he told the Senate, 'you cannot find a single Samoan who will say I didn't get a vaccine because of Bobby Kennedy.'
The second point is a pretty slick dodge. Vaccine hesitancy doesn't work like that. Nobody stops vaccinating their child because a famous American showed up and handed them a pamphlet. It works through credibility laundering, through giving fringe ideas a patina of legitimacy by associating them with someone credentialed and prominent. Samoan officials said that is exactly what Kennedy's visit did.
The first point, the medical informatics defense, is now directly contradicted by Graven's own words. Kennedy told the Senate that Children's Health Defense had a six million dollar grant to digitize Samoa's health records and that this was 'the purpose' of the trip. But his colleague, writing to Samoan officials after discussion with Kennedy, described a mission to evaluate 'outcomes associated with the recent discontinuity in vaccinations.' That is a vaccine study. Dressed up in the language of health informatics, but a vaccine study.
What Happens When a Cabinet Secretary Lies to the Senate
Theoretically, lying to the Senate under oath is perjury. It is a federal crime. It is the kind of thing that is supposed to have consequences, even for powerful people, especially for powerful people.
In practice, Democratic senators have already called this out. Senator Wyden and Senator Markey both questioned Kennedy directly on this during his confirmation hearings. Multiple lawmakers have since said the Guardian and AP reporting shows he lied. What has happened as a result? Kennedy is currently the Secretary of Health and Human Services, overseeing every federal health agency in the country, including the CDC and the FDA.
Republicans control the Senate. No Republican has shown any interest in pursuing the question of whether their party's health secretary committed perjury. The investigation that would be required to hold him accountable is not coming. So here we are: the man in charge of American public health may have lied to Congress about a trip that preceded the deaths of 83 children, and the institution with the power to do something about it has decided not to notice.
The Dingo Take
Let's be precise about what we are looking at. This is not a 'he said, she said' situation. This is a 'he said one thing under oath to the Senate, and his own colleague said the opposite in writing to a foreign government before the trip even happened' situation. The Guardian has the emails. The emails exist. Dr. Graven used the word 'mission' multiple times. He explained the mission was about evaluating outcomes tied to the vaccination pause. He said Kennedy asked him to come along. Kennedy told senators it had nothing to do with vaccines. At least one of these things is a lie, and it is not the email.
RFK Jr. is not a fringe podcaster anymore. He runs HHS. He controls the agencies that set vaccine policy, fund medical research, and respond to disease outbreaks for three hundred and forty million people. The fact that his ascent to that position required misleading the Senate about a trip that preceded a measles outbreak killing dozens of children should be disqualifying. In a functional government, it would be. In this one, it is a Wednesday.
Samoa's children paid the real price for whatever Kennedy and his colleagues were doing on that island in 2019. The least this country could do is be honest about what it was. Based on everything the Guardian has reported, Kennedy has shown no interest in doing that. And the people with the power to compel him to answer for it have decided they'd rather not ask.
