RFK Jr Samoa trip: senators probe whether he lied to Congress
Senators Ron Wyden and Angela Alsobrooks want documents on Kennedy's 2019 Samoa visit by 4 December. What the probe is about, and what HHS says.
Two Democratic senators have opened an investigation into whether US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. misled Congress about his 2019 trip to Samoa, months before a measles outbreak there killed 83 people, most of them young children. Senators Ron Wyden and Angela Alsobrooks announced the probe on Thursday, 12 November, in a letter to Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine group Kennedy once chaired.
What the senators want
The letter asks Children’s Health Defense to hand over documents about the trip by 4 December, AP reported. It also asks for all communications between the group and federal government officials since January 2025.
Wyden is expected to chair the Senate Finance Committee, which oversees the health department (HHS), once Democrats take control of Congress in January after their midterm wins.
Why Samoa matters
Kennedy has told lawmakers several times that his 2019 visit had “nothing to do with vaccines”. His own account is that the trip was about introducing a digital health records system.
In August, AP and The Guardian published a letter Kennedy sent to Samoa’s prime minister before the trip, on Children’s Health Defense letterhead, which contradicted that account, according to their reporting. Newly obtained emails reported by PBS also undermined his testimony.
The trip came at a sensitive time. Samoa’s vaccination rates had fallen sharply after a vaccine-related medical error in 2018, and the measles outbreak that followed in late 2019 became one of the deadliest in recent years in the Pacific.
What HHS says
The health department has said the visit was unrelated to vaccines and called any claim that Kennedy lied to Congress false and “defamatory”. AP has noted that Kennedy was not under oath at his confirmation hearing.
Why it is being searched
Kennedy is one of the most talked-about members of the Trump cabinet, and Democrats will soon chair the committees that oversee him. The next marker is 4 December, the senators’ deadline for the documents.
