WASHINGTON - In what can only be described as a stunning development that surprised absolutely no one, senators are once again calling for Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s resignation - or, you know, a swift kick out the door - after newly released documents suggest he may have, shall we say, stretched the truth during his confirmation hearings. At least one senator is calling for a criminal investigation, because apparently lying to Congress is still a thing.
“This is a pattern, not a slip,” Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) said, in a statement that probably came with a heavy sigh. “RFK Jr. has lied to the Senate, lied to the American people, and jeopardized the health of children to advance his anti-vaccine agenda.”
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) was even more direct, taking to social media to declare the documents proof that “we got RFK lying on the record during his confirmation hearing (a crime).” He’s called for the matter to be referred to the US Department of Justice for a criminal investigation. In a statement to The Guardian, Wyden didn't mince words: “RFK’s platform is built on lies and grifts that leave a trail of dead children in their wake. There are consequences for lying to Congress.”
For those who missed the reality-bending spectacle that was Kennedy’s confirmation hearings in January 2025, the backstory goes like this: Kennedy, then a prominent anti-vaccine activist leading the rabidly anti-vaccine Children’s Health Defense (CHD), took a trip to Samoa in 2019. Just months later, Samoa was hit with a massive measles outbreak that killed 83 people, mostly children under 5, fueled largely by vaccine hesitancy that anti-vaccine activists had so helpfully stoked. Vaccination rates had cratered to as low as 31 percent.
When senators pressed Kennedy on his connection to that outbreak, he did what any self-respecting conspiracy theorist would do: he denied everything. “I went there, [it had] nothing to do with vaccines,” he told Wyden, claiming he was there to introduce a medical informatics system to digitalize records. To Markey, he said, “My purpose in going down there had nothing to do with vaccines.”
Enter the Associated Press and The Guardian, who on Thursday jointly released documents that make Kennedy’s statements look, well, like lies. One document is a letter Kennedy sent to Samoa’s prime minister in January 2019, in which he falsely suggested that “deaths associated recently with MMR [measles, mumps, and rubella] vaccines” were due to a bad lot from the manufacturer. He proposed letting his “team” from CHD investigate the country’s MMR vaccines. In case anyone missed the point, Kennedy used the words “vaccination” and “vaccine” eight times in that letter. Eight. But sure, nothing to do with vaccines.
The prime minister, apparently not one to look a gift conspiracy theorist in the mouth, responded in February welcoming Kennedy and his “team’s independent health assessment of our MMR vaccines.”
Now, about those deaths Kennedy mentioned: they were two infants who died shortly after receiving MMR shots in July 2018. Officials determined that two nurses had accidentally mixed the vaccine with a lethal dose of muscle relaxant. One nurse even tried to cover it up by fishing the empty bottle out of the garbage and taking it home. Both were charged with manslaughter and sentenced to five years in prison in August 2019. But CHD and other anti-vaccine activists, never ones to let facts get in the way of a good scare, pounced on the tragedy, blaming the MMR vaccine. They spent months posting about it on Facebook and questioning vaccine safety, and never bothered to update those posts with the nurses’ fatal error.
So when Kennedy visited Samoa in May and June of 2019, he brought along a CHD member, his wife (actor Cheryl Hines, because why not), and a camera crew, and posed with local anti-vaccine activists and embassy staff.
Samoa’s measles outbreak began in October. By November, a WHO official tied the outbreak to an anti-vaccine group stoking fear on social media (without naming CHD, but come on). The official said the impact “now being measured in the lives of children who have died in the course of this outbreak.” Also in November, Kennedy sent the prime minister a four-page letter falsely claiming the measles vaccine was responsible, even writing that the MMR vaccine could spur “the evolution of more virulent measles strains.” Because that’s a thing.
Now, with the release of these letters, more lawmakers are speaking out. Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.) said Kennedy “must resign or be fired immediately.” Hawaii Governor Josh Green, a doctor who responded to Samoa’s outbreak, also renewed his call for Kennedy’s immediate resignation.
And while all this unfolds, the US is dealing with its own slipping vaccination rates and measles outbreaks that have killed two people, including a newborn, this year. Kennedy’s response? Spreading misinformation and downplaying the threat, as is his wont.
So here we are: a health secretary who may have lied under oath, a trail of preventable deaths, and a government that seems to be taking its sweet time figuring out what to do about it. But hey, at least the documents are out there. Silver linings.