Thursday, American Oversight sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) seeking a criminal investigation into Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. over his apparent false statements to two U.S. Senate committees about the purpose of his 2019 trip to Samoa on behalf of his former organization, Children’s Health Defense.
The request, sent to Attorney General Todd Blanche and U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro, points to a newly revealed Jan. 20, 2019, letter in which Kennedy personally proposed that Children’s Health Defense travel to Samoa to conduct an examination of “what happened with your MMR [measles, mumps, and rubella] vaccines” and states Kennedy’s belief that “the deaths associated recently with MMR vaccine” in Samoa may have been “manifestations” of the vaccine’s alleged effects. The letter directly contradicts Kennedy’s repeated statements to the Senate Finance and Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee during his January 2025 confirmation hearings that the trip had nothing to do with vaccines.
“Robert F. Kennedy Jr. repeatedly testified before two separate Senate committees that his trip to Samoa had nothing to do with vaccines. But a letter he wrote to Samoa’s prime minister six years earlier appears to contradict that testimony,” said our Executive Director Chioma Chukwu. “Congress relies on truthful testimony to do its job, particularly on matters as consequential as public health. If Kennedy lied to the Senate while seeking confirmation as the nation’s top health official, the Justice Department must investigate and hold him accountable.”
During his Jan. 29, 2025, confirmation hearing before the Senate Finance Committee, Kennedy told senators that his 2019 trip to Samoa “had nothing to do with vaccines” and that he went to introduce a medical informatics system. The next day, before the Senate HELP Committee, Sen. Edward Markey pressed Kennedy on the same point; Kennedy again said the trip had “nothing to do with vaccines” and, when asked directly whether it had anything to do with vaccines, answered, “No, it did not.”
A Jan. 20, 2019, letter — first published by the Associated Press and the Guardian — signed by Kennedy and addressed to then-Samoan Prime Minister Tuilaʻepa Saʻilele Malielegaoi, written on Children’s Health Defense letterhead, proposes that his team conduct a “detailed health informatics assessment in Samoa of what happened with your MMR vaccines” and discusses vaccines eight times. The Samoan prime minister’s response, dated Feb. 25, 2019, welcomes “Samoa to have the benefit of your Team’s independent health assessment of our MMR Vaccines.”
Kennedy was confirmed as Secretary of HHS by the Senate in a 52-48 vote.
Our letter argues that Kennedy’s confirmation-hearing testimony and his own prior written proposal to the Samoan government cannot be reconciled, and that the discrepancy warrants investigation under 18 U.S.C. § 1001, which prohibits knowingly or willfully making materially false statements to Congress regardless of whether the statements were made under oath.
Kennedy’s 2019 trip to Samoa has drawn scrutiny for years. It came as the island nation was recovering from the deaths of two infants after an improperly prepared MMR vaccine, which had prompted a 10-month nationwide halt to vaccinations and a sharp drop in immunization rates. Months after Kennedy’s visit, a measles outbreak swept through Samoa, sickening thousands and killing 83 people, most of them children under five. Public health officials have said the outbreak was worsened by anti-vaccine activism that Kennedy’s visit helped legitimize.
The threat has followed Kennedy into office: the U.S. is now in its second consecutive record-breaking year for measles cases. Just last week Pennsylvania’s health department confirmed the first two measles-related deaths in the U.S. this year — both were unvaccinated Lancaster County residents, and the state’s first measles deaths in 35 years.
We have sent numerous Freedom of Information Act requests to HHS — including to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Food and Drug Administration, and National Institutes of Health — seeking information on how external individuals and organizations, like Children’s Health Defense, are influencing Kennedy and federal vaccine policy.
