Did RFK Jr. Lie to Congress About His Samoa Trip?
No court or Senate finding says he lied — not yet. What exists today is a formal Senate investigation, opened by letter on Wednesday, into exactly that question, and a written record that sits hard against the words Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gave the Senate to win his job. Senators Ron Wyden and Angela Alsobrooks say they are investigating evidence that Kennedy "unlawfully lied to Congress on multiple occasions" about his 2019 trip to Samoa. The Department of Health and Human Services answers that the claim he lied is "not only false but outright defamatory." Both cannot be right, and the documents are where the answer sits.
The plain reality is a gap between paper and testimony. At his January 2025 confirmation hearings, Kennedy told senators repeatedly that his visit to Samoa had "nothing to do with vaccines," and that his purpose was to introduce a medical informatics system. But in January 2019, before he travelled, Kennedy wrote to Samoa's prime minister on Children's Health Defense letterhead saying he wanted to study the country's measles, mumps and rubella vaccine after two children died from improperly prepared doses — and he used the words vaccine or vaccination eight times in that one letter, reporting by the Associated Press and the Guardian showed in August. The prime minister replied that Samoa could benefit from his group's assessment of MMR vaccines and invited him to come. A trip planned in writing around a vaccine was then described to the Senate, under the eyes of the men and women voting on his nomination, as a trip that had nothing to do with vaccines. That gap is the whole reason people are asking this question.
Kennedy's side claims the trip was never about vaccines at all. The health department has maintained that the Samoa visit "was unrelated to vaccines," and Kennedy has denied that he made public anti-vaccine statements in Samoa or discouraged anyone there from being vaccinated. Wyden and Alsobrooks claim the opposite — that the evidence shows he lied, and lied more than once.
"We intend to hold Secretary Kennedy accountable for the grave harm he has caused to vulnerable children. We also intend to hold him accountable for any false statements made to Congress, a crime that undermines the Senate's ability to fulfill its constitutional duties."
The common-sense principle is simple: a confirmation hearing only works if the answers are true. The Senate cannot give its consent to a cabinet secretary on the strength of words that the nominee's own letters contradict — if it could, the hearing would be theatre and the vote would mean nothing. That is why the law treats a knowingly false statement to Congress as a crime with a possible prison sentence, whether or not the witness was under oath — Kennedy was not under oath at his hearing — even though such prosecutions are rare, as the Associated Press notes.
The consequence is now moving. The senators' letter is not a subpoena and carries no legal force by itself, but it demands a wide set of records from Children's Health Defense — the anti-vaccine group Kennedy chaired — covering his Samoa travel, his 2024 presidential campaign, his confirmation process, and the group's communications with federal officials since January 20, 2025, with a deadline of December 4. Tim Stretton of the Project on Government Oversight said the group would be unwise to disregard it, because the committee can compel the records if it has to. And the leverage grows in January, when Wyden is expected to chair the Senate Finance Committee, which oversees Kennedy's department, after Democrats retake Congress. The same two senators announced a second investigation on Wednesday, into hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts reportedly given to Kennedy last year by a donor and former employee. Kennedy, who announced new federal support for ibogaine research this week in his health role (read our coverage), now faces the committee that confirmed him going back over the words that got him confirmed.
The details that matter are these. Kennedy went to Samoa in June 2019 as chairman and chief legal counsel of Children's Health Defense, months before a measles outbreak killed 83 people there, most of them children under five. Wyden had already called in August for Kennedy to be referred for a criminal investigation over this testimony; Wednesday's letter turns that call into a standing inquiry with a paper trail and a deadline. What it has not yet produced is a finding. If the records Children's Health Defense hands over match Kennedy's testimony, the charge collapses; if they match his 2019 letter, then the question that follows is the one the Senate cannot dodge — if a man can tell the Senate one thing and his own letters another and keep the job, what is a confirmation hearing for?
Wyden and Alsobrooks put their position in their letter, and it is the strongest line in the story: "We intend to hold Secretary Kennedy accountable for the grave harm he has caused to vulnerable children."