Kennedy Jr. is facing renewed scrutiny after a letter he wrote ahead of a 2019 visit to Samoa appeared to contradict what he told lawmakers about the reason for the trip during his Senate confirmation hearing. On Thursday, the and The Guardian reported on new documents they obtained, including a letter Kennedy wrote to the Samoan prime minister before the visit, requesting to study the Pacific island nation's measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccines after the deaths of two children who had received them. In the letter, Kennedy, a prominent vaccine skeptic, used the words "vaccine" or "vaccination" eight times.
That letter raises questions about Kennedy's testimony before Congress and the purpose of his visit to Samoa, as he told lawmakers in January 2025 that the trip had "nothing to do with vaccines." Knowingly giving material false testimony to Congress is a crime that carries a possible prison sentence even if a person is not under oath, though it is rarely prosecuted. A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services told AP that Kennedy's Samoa visit was "unrelated to vaccines," and that any claim or insinuation that he lied to lawmakers "is not only false but outright defamatory." Newsweek has contacted HHS and the White House for further comment. Kennedy's 2019 trip came months before a deadly measles outbreak in Samoa killed 83 people, mostly children under 5.
At the time, Kennedy was leading the Children's Health Defense, a nonprofit known for its anti-vaccine activism. Critics have said his visit contributed to anti-vaccine sentiment in Samoa, which Kennedy has denied. In the letter to Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, then Samoa's prime minister, Kennedy wrote that he wanted to study the country's use of the MMR vaccine.
"I am writing this letter to you in the hope that we might be helpful to the people of your great nation," he wrote in the letter, dated January 20, 2019. He continued: "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. 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. This makes the likelihood of adverse lot and manufacturer specific effects higher for smaller nations where all vaccine can be from few or a single lot and manufacturer." Kennedy went on to write that he believed the deaths of the two children could have resulted from manufacturing issues. "To evaluate whether or not this has been experienced in Samoa, I would propose my team conduct detailed health informatics assessment in Samoa of what happened with your MMR vaccines," he wrote.
The two children had died in July 2018, and authorities initially determined they had received contaminated MMR vaccines that had been improperly prepared. The two nurses involved were criminally charged and pleaded guilty to manslaughter. The Samoan government halted all vaccinations until April 2019 and vaccination rates plummeted.
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