Documents challenge RFK Jr.’s claim Samoa trip had nothing to do with vaccines

RFK Jr. went to Samoa to spread vaccine fears. The measles outbreak after killed 83.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s myriad lies are finally catching up to him.Oregon Senator Ron Wyden called for a criminal investigation Thursday into the Health Secretary’s conduct, citing new evidence that directly connected Kennedy and his anti-vaccine messaging to the deadly 2019 measles epidemic in Samoa.“RFK’s platform is built on lies and grifts that leave a trail of dead children in their wake,” Wyden told The Guardian. “There are consequences for lying to Congress.”Wyden added that he intended to press the Senate’s Republican majority to issue a criminal referral for Kennedy to the Justice Department.“When Democrats retake the majority in the Senate, RFK will be at the top of the list of Trump officials the Finance Committee will hold accountable for endangering American families,” Wyden, who currently serves as the top Democrat on the committee, told the outlet.During two separate confirmation hearings last year, Kennedy claimed that his trek to the Polynesian island country had “nothing to do with vaccines.”Yet letters obtained by The Guardian and the Associated Press revealed that the virulent anti-vaxxer explicitly informed the Samoan prime minister ahead of his trip that he intended to study the efficacy of the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine. In one such letter dated January 20, 2019, Kennedy unambiguously argued that he believed two infant deaths on the island were “temporally associated with MMR vaccines.”Kennedy’s visit immediately preceded a deadly measles outbreak on the island. At the time, Kennedy’s anti-vaxx nonprofit, Children’s Health Defense, spread rampant misinformation about the efficacy of vaccines throughout Samoa, tanking the island’s vaccination rate from a 60-70 percent range to just 31 percent, according to Mother Jones. Up until that point, Samoa had not experienced a severe measles outbreak since 1985, when 1,095 confirmed cases were reported to the World Health Organization. But in 2019, after Kennedy’s visit, the country reported 5,707 cases of measles as well as 83 measles-related deaths, the majority of which were children under the age of five.Unfortunately for the American public, the conspiratorial rhetoric of the anti-vaxx movement has had similarly deleterious effects on local inoculation rates, spurring a regional measles health crisis that has so far killed two people and infected more than 2,777 people this year alone, far exceeding the tally for 2025 by hundreds of cases.According to CDC data, vaccination coverage for U.S. kindergartners fell by nearly three percent—from 95.2 percent to 92.4 percent—between the 2019-2020 school year and the 2025-2026 school year. The dip is more significant than it seems at face value: the lowered figures place the age groups below the threshold for herd immunity that would protect even unvaccinated members of a community (95 percent.)Other Democratic officials have similarly called for Kennedy to be removed from his post since the letters emerged.Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey said in a statement that Kennedy “cannot be trusted to run HHS for even one more day,” while Hawaii Governor Josh Green—who personally witnessed the Samoan outbreak—said Kennedy needed to immediately resign “for the safety and health of our country.”Maryland Senator Angela Alsobrooks told CNN that America’s current measles outbreak could be “tied directly to the horrific leadership of Secretary Kennedy.”Kennedy was not under oath at the time of his confirmation hearing, but that doesn’t mean he had free license to lie to America’s lawmakers about his qualifications to lead U.S. health policy. It’s a felony to make false statements to or conceal facts from the federal government, as detailed by U.S. Code.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. repeatedly told lawmakers who held the key to his confirmation last year that a 2019 visit to Samoa before a deadly measles outbreak had "nothing to do with vaccines."New documents obtained by The Associated Press and The Guardian refute that testimony.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. lied to the Senate about his 2019 trip to Samoa.During two separate confirmation hearings last year, America’s foremost anti-vaccine activist claimed that his trek to the Polynesian island country had “nothing to do with vaccines.” Fact check: It did.Letters obtained by The Guardian and the Associated Press, published Thursday, reveal that Kennedy explicitly informed the Samoan prime minister ahead of his trip of his intention to study the efficacy of the measles, mumps, and rubella, or MMR, vaccine. In one such letter dated January 20, 2019, Kennedy unambiguously argued that he believed two recent infant deaths on the island were “temporally associated with MMR vaccines.”“For most of the world, investigation of adverse health events associated with vaccines—or any pharmaceutical for that matter—is both difficult and time consuming,” Kennedy wrote. “Health information systems are rarely designed to support rapid study of associations between diagnoses and specific vaccination events.“It is, however, known that vaccines vary both lot-to-lot from specific manufacturers, and between manufacturers for a single vaccine type,” he continued. “This makes the likelihood of adverse lot and manufacturer specific effects higher for smaller nations where all vaccines can be from a few or a single lot and manufacturer.”Kennedy’s visit preceded a deadly measles outbreak on the island in 2019. At the time, Kennedy’s anti-vax nonprofit, Children’s Health Defense, spread rampant misinformation about the efficacy of vaccines throughout Samoa, tanking the nation’s vaccination rate from a 60 percent–70 percent range to just 31 percent, according to Mother Jones. Up until that point, Samoa had not experienced a severe measles outbreak since 1985, when 1,095 confirmed cases were reported to the World Health Organization. But in 2019, after Kennedy’s visit, the country reported 5,707 cases of measles as well as 83 measles-related deaths, the majority of which were children under the age of five.During his confirmation hearings in February 2025, Kennedy repeatedly told skeptical lawmakers that his visit had “nothing to do with vaccines” and was actually focused on implementing public health systems that would digitize Samoan health records.A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services told The Guardian in a statement that “Secretary Kennedy’s visit to Samoa in 2019 was unrelated to vaccines.”The spokesperson added that “any claim or insinuation based on these letters that Secretary Kennedy lied under oath or to Congress is not only false but outright defamatory,” despite the fact that Kennedy was not sworn in under oath before his congressional hearings.However, that didn’t grant Kennedy the ability and free license to lie to America’s lawmakers: It’s a felony to make false statements to or conceal facts from the federal government, as detailed by U.S. Code.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., then a prominent anti-vaccine activist, preempted the 2019 visit with a letter to the Samoan prime minister requesting to study the Pacific island nation's measles, mumps and rubella vaccines after the deaths of two children who had received them. In the letter, he used the words vaccine or vaccination eight times.

Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said a Samoa trip had nothing to do with vaccines. New documents obtained by The Associated Press and The Guardian refute that testimony.