During two days of questioning during Senate confirmation hearings last year, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. he repeated the same answer.
He said the closely scrutinized 2019 trip he took to Samoa, which came before a devastating measles outbreak, had “nothing to do with vaccines.”
Documents obtained by The Guardian and The Associated Press undermine that testimony. Emails sent by employees at the US Embassy and the United Nations provide, for the first time, an inside look at how Kennedy’s trip came about and include contemporary accounts that suggest his concerns about vaccine safety motivated the visit.
The documents have prompted concerns from at least one US senator that the lawyer and activist who is now leading America’s health policy lied to Congress about the visit. Samoan officials later said Kennedy’s trip boosted the credibility of anti-vaccination activists before the measles outbreak, which sickened thousands of people and killed 83, mostly children under 5.
The revelations, which come as a measles outbreak rages across the United States, build on earlier criticism that Kennedy’s anti-vaccination record makes him unfit to serve as health secretary, a role in which he worked to reshape immunization policy and public perceptions of vaccines.
The newly released documents also reveal previously unknown details of the trip, including that a US Embassy employee helped the Kennedy team connect with Samoan officials. Kennedy, who was leading his anti-vaccination group Children’s Health Defense at the time, did not publicly discuss the trip at the time, but he has since said his “purpose” for going there was unrelated to vaccinations and “I ended up having conversations with people, some of whom I never thought I would meet.” In addition to meeting with anti-vaccination activists, Kennedy met with Samoan officials, including the health minister at the time, who told NBC News that Kennedy shared his view that vaccines were unsafe. Kennedy said he went there to introduce a medical data system.
The US State Department turned over the emails – many of which are heavily redacted – as a result of an open records lawsuit brought with the help of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
This disclosure comes at a time when Kennedy, as President Donald Trump’s health secretary, has used his enormous power and public influence to change federal vaccination guidance and cast doubt on the safety and importance of vaccines, including the measles vaccine. Meanwhile, measles outbreaks in several US states have set back decades of success in eliminating the highly contagious disease, putting the country on the brink of losing its elimination status. The latest figures show that more than 875 people in South Carolina have been infected.
‘Nothing to do with vaccines’
Kennedy addressed questions about his trip to Samoa during two Senate confirmation hearings for his appointment as health secretary.
“My purpose in going down there had nothing to do with vaccines,” he said under questioning from Democratic Senator Edward Markey of Massachusetts at his January 30, 2025 hearing.
“The trip had nothing to do with vaccines as I told my colleagues in Senate Finance yesterday?” Markey asked later.
“Nothing to do with vaccines,” Kennedy replied.
One of the senators who questioned Kennedy about Samoa during his confirmation hearings, Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, responded on the record by saying, “Kennedy’s anti-vaccination agenda is directly responsible for the deaths of innocent children.”
“Liing to Congress about his role in the deadly measles outbreak in Samoa only 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 spokesman for Wyden and other Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee, said it is a crime to make a false statement to Congress and “casual and false denials to Congress will not be swept under the rug.”
A spokesman for the US Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to questions sent by email and text.
Kennedy said that his visit did not influence people’s decisions on whether to vaccinate themselves or their children.
“I had nothing to do with people not vaccinating in Samoa. I never told anyone not to vaccinate,” he told the 2023 documentary “Shot in the Arm.” “You know, I didn’t go there for any reason to do that.”
Vaccine program halted
Anti-vaccination activists in the United States became interested in Samoa in July 2018, when two infants died after being injected with a tainted measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, vaccine that was poorly prepared. The government stopped the vaccine program for 10 months, until the following April. Vaccination rates have fallen.
Records show that during the time when no vaccine was being administered, Kennedy’s group, Children’s Health Defense, was trying to connect Kennedy with the prime minister of Samoa. A January 2019 email from the group’s president at the time, 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 cc: to Kennedy and others.
“I hope everything is fine, you are organizing the logistics with the PMs office and you wanted to confirm how many people are coming? She just wanted to confirm the costs etc for the visit and how this will be managed,” he wrote.
Tamasese immediately sent the chain of messages to the personal and government email accounts of Benjamin Harding, then an employee of the US Embassy in Apia, Samoa.
“just sent this. I expect an answer tomorrow as I think it is Sunday there. Your letter looks good,” said Tamasese to Harding.
While the US Embassy has in the past acknowledged that unnamed staff attended an event with Kennedy and anti-graft activists while in Samoa, records show that Harding was not a passive participant: He helped arrange Kennedy’s visit and connected the Kennedy delegation with Samoan government officials.
On May 23, 2019, in an email to Harding’s personal email address, an employee of the Samoan Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade wrote: “Hi Benj, I am currently waiting for the official biological notes for Mr. Kennedy and Dr. Graven to forward to the Honorable Prime Minister and the Honorable Minister of Health for their reference.
Harding forwarded the ministry’s request to Dr. Michael Graven, then the chief information officer at Children’s Health Defense.
Harding did not respond to messages seeking comment sent to various email addresses listed, social media accounts, a phone number listed to his parents and a general mailbox at a company he lists as his current workplace on his LinkedIn profile.
Embassy staff were advised of Harding’s involvement in the trip by Sheldon Yett, then the representative for Pacific island countries at UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund.
“We now understand that the Prime Minister has invited Robert Kennedy and his team to come to Samoa to investigate the safety of the vaccine,” Yett wrote in a May 22, 2019 email to an embassy employee based in New Zealand. “The member of staff in question appears to have played a role in facilitating this.”
Two days later, a top member of the embassy staff in Apia wrote to Scott Brown, then the US Republican President’s ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa, warning of Kennedy’s trip and Harding’s involvement.
“The real reason Kennedy is coming is to raise awareness about vaccinations, more specifically some of the health concerns associated with vaccinations (from his perspective),” wrote the embassy official, Antone Greubel. “It turns out that our own Benjamin Harding played some role in a personal capacity in bringing him here.” Greubel wrote that he told Harding to “cease and desist from any further involvement in this travel,” though the rest of the sentence is redacted.
Yett did not respond to questions, although he said in an email, “that was a very sad time in Samoa.”
Brown, who is running for the US Senate in New Hampshire, declined to comment. Greubel referred questions to a press office at the State Department. A State Department spokesman would not answer questions about the records, saying that as a general practice they do not comment on personnel matters.
Harding left the embassy in July 2020, although he remains in Samoa, according to his LinkedIn account.
Kennedy finally visited in June 2019. While there, he and his wife, actor Cheryl Hines, were photographed greeting the prime minister during an Independence Day celebration. He also met with government health officials as well as a group of vaccine doubters, including Tamasese.
The Guardian and the AP could find no record of Kennedy publicly discussing the purpose of his trip until after the measles struck. In 2021, he wrote that he went there to discuss “the introduction of a medical information system” to track drug safety. He said Samoan officials “were curious to measure the health outcomes after the ‘natural experiment’ created by the national rest from vaccination.”
Since then, he has said that his reason for going to Samoa was not related to vaccines.
Redwood, the former Children’s Health Defense Chair who made an early outreach to Samoa, is now employed at HHS, reportedly working on vaccine safety.
During the measles outbreak, Kennedy wrote a four-page letter to the Prime Minister of Samoa suggesting without evidence that the measles infections were due to a faulty vaccine and other baseless theories.
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This story was reported and published jointly by The Guardian and The Associated Press.