Trouble with The Law

Enviromental Activism

Anti Vax Quackery

2024 Presidential Campaign

Family Life and Education

Robert Francis Kennedy Jr is the son of former US attorney general Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of former President John F. Kennedy. He is an attorney, environmental and anti-vaccine activist. He also has a syndicated radio show. He is a quack.

RFJ Jr was born on January 17, 1954 in Washington, DC. He was one of 11 children. He has six brothers and four sisters. After he graduated from Millbrook Academy in Gloucestershire, England, UK he studied at the London School of Economics and Harvard University. He earned his bachelor’s degree in American history and literature in 1976. He then earned a doctorate in law from Pace University.

RFK married Emily Ruth Black after meeting at the University of Virginia law school in 1982. They had two children, Robert and Kathleen, and divorced in March 1994.

Less than a month went by and he married Mary Richardson during a ceremony on a ship on the Hudson River. They had four children. They are Conor, Kyra, William, and Aiden. He filed for divorce shortly after she was arrested for DIU two different times. Mary was found deceased on May 16, 2012. It was later found out that she died of asphyxiation due to hanging herself. The divorce was never finalized.

RFK Jr then began dating Cheryl Hines in 2010. They met through Larry David. He introduced them two years in a row. They married on August 2, 2014. She has a daughter from a previous marriage.

Trouble With The Law

When he was 16 in 1970, he was arrested in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts for smoking cannabis and was put on 13 months probation.

In 1983, he was the assistant to the district attorney of New York. During that summer he passed the Bar exam after taking it twice.

He was forced to put his legal career on hold after he was arrested for drug possession at a South Dakota airport. He was traveling from Minneapolis to Grand Rapids on Rebulic Airlines. RFK Jr suddenly felt dazed and felt sick. Concerned passengers alerted the flight attendant. The flight attendant notified the pilot. The pilot then radioed Rapid City to request paramedics and ambulance meet the plane when it landed.

When it landed, RFK Jr refused medical assistance. The local police department suspected a drug overdose. They found slightly less than one gram of heroin. Four days later, Pennington County State Attorney Rod Lefholz ordered RFK Jr to be arrested for possession. This was a felony that carried a penalty of 2 years in jail and a $2000 fine.

He pleaded guilty to the felony. He was sentenced to two years probation, drug testing and treatment, and 1,500 community service.

He checked into a private hospital in New Jersey for drug rehab. “With the best medical help I can find, I am determined to beat this problem. I do regret the pain which this situation will bring to my family and to so many Americans who admire my parents and the Kennedy Family.”

Part of his sentence was community service. To fulfill this, he did community service for Riverkeeper, a nonprofit that was dedicated to preserving the Hudson River. He became so involved with the nonprofit, he was hired after he finished his 1,500 hours of community service. He was hired as a chief attorney after having passed the last part of his bar exam in 1985.

In July 2001, he and Al Sharpton, Jacqueline Jackson were convicted of trespassing during a protest of US Navy bombing exercises on Vieques island in Puerto Rico. A federal judge in San Juan sentenced him to jail for 30 days.

In 2019, RFK Jr was arrested at the US Capitol during a climate change protest that was organized by Jane Fonda. They called it Fire Drill Friday. This protest was a sit-in. RFK was arrested and charged with crowding and obstructing.

Environmental Activism

In 1998, RFK Jr. co-founded a bottled water company, Tear of the Clouds LLC with Chris Bartle and John Hoving.

After one year he cofounded the Waterkeeper Alliance, a global umbrella group that supports local environmental organizations to protect different bodies of water.

In 2004, he became a co-host with Mike Papantionio and Same Seder of Ring of Fire. It is a syndicated US talk radio show that focuses on American Politics.

In the mid-2000’s, RFK Jr’s work was centered on advocating for sustainable energy development and enouraged citizens to protect their local waterways.

In May 2010, he earned the title of “Hero for the Plant” by Time magazine for his work with Riverkeeper in helping to Restore the Hudson River.

He also wrote two books and many articles on environmental issues.

He is also the senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

In 2016, he joined concerned citizens and indigenous people from different tribes at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in protest of the Dakota Access Pipeline. “Today, we stand in solidarity with the people of Standing Rock and commended to Sioux Nation for taking on this courageous fight on behalf of our country humanity and democracy. Across the nation, communities of color face environmental and public health threats most communities don’t have to think about. This historic peaceful protest declares that all communities deserve clean water.”

In 2017, Kennedy resigned as RiverKeeper’s chief attorney after 33 years of service. In November 2020, he left his position as president of Waterkeeper Alliance to “devote himself, full time, to other issues.” He had been president since its founding in 1999 and during his time there, waterkeeper Alliance grew to include more than 250 groups across 48 countries.

The “other issues” is where he went downhill.

Antivax Quackery

All his children are vaccinated and he gets his flu vaccination annually. He is well known for his antivaccine views on the nonexistent link between autism and Vaccines.

According to the World Health Organization, there was a 300% increase in number of measles cases around the world compared to the first three months of 2018. More than 110,000 are dying from measles every year. Most of these cases could have been prevented with vaccines.

These numbers are growing because of the fear and mistrust of vaccines that are amplified by quacks like RFK Jr.

He has spoken out about thimerosol in vaccines, even though it has been proven not to be a link, due to hysteria, it had been removed from vaccines. He is vocal that there is a government coverup on its “damages” to children.

In 2005, Kennedy wrote a since debunked article in Rolling Stone and Salon called “Deadly Immunity.” This said that there was a link between vaccines and thimerosal. The FDA phased it out of almost all vaccines due to the hysteria but there were replicated studies showing that this is false. The article was changed five times but then was fully retracted in both publications.

CBS News reported, “Kennedy’s Rilling Stone Article originally said that ‘. . . the link between thimerosal and the epidemic of childhood neurological disorders is real.’ But since the Lancet retracted the original piece of research that made that link, and since the British medical journal then revealed that the study wasn’t merely a mistake but an outright fraud, the entire notion that vaccination and autism are somehow linked has been thoroughly debunked.”

Dr. Nick Sawyer, an emergency medicine doctor in Sacramento said,”He’s lying to people about critical things that have to do with our nation’s children’s health.” Sawyer founded No License for Disinformation. It is a group of doctors who call on state medical boards to discipline doctors who spread misinformation. Sawyer also said that he is a “huge threat.”

In April 2015, RFK Jr helped promote a movie called Trace Amounts. This is an anti-vaccine propaganda movie.

In 2016, he founded Children’s Health Defense. It was originally called the World Mercury Project. Its platform is anti-vaccine and anti-fluoride. This group gained momentum during the COVID-19 pandemic. Meta banned its accounts on Facebook and Instagram in August 2022 for violating its community standards for spreading misinformation.

January 10, 2017, RFK Jr claimed that he was asked by Donald Trump to chair a commission on vaccine safety. Shortly after this, RFK Jr told the press in the lobby of Trump Tower that he had accepted an offer from Trump. Trump’s representatives told CNN that “no decisions have been made” at that time.

In 2017, Seth Mnookin wrote in Scientific America,” Kennedy made his name in the anti-vaccine movement in 2005 when he published a story alleging a massive conspiracy regarding thimerasol, a mercury-based preservative that had been removed from all childhood vaccines except for some variations of the flu vaccine in 2001.”

On June 13, 2019, RFK Jr lobbied against California state pro-vaccine bill. It would limit medical exceptions from vaccines without approval from a state public health officer. It would require the state dept of health to develop a state-wide standardized medical exemption request form to use by licensed doctors.

In May 2019, RFK Jr was the keynote speaker at Autims One. He had been a speaker many times before along with Kerri Rivera and other quacks.

On November 14, 2019, a study found RFK Jr’s organization funded antivaccine ads on Facebook. A 2019 study found that a large percentage of the antivaccination ads on Facebook were funded by two organizations run by The World Mercury Project by RFK Jr. and Stop Mandatory Vaccinations by Larry Cook. They found that “54% of the anti-vaccine ads shown on the platform during the study period” were bought in by those organizations.

On August 30, 2020, RFK Jr spoke at a protest in Berlin to rally against Germany’s coronavirus restrictions and called it totalitarianism. He said that his uncle had famously addressed Berlin in 1963 to counter totalitarianism and “today Berlin is again the front against totalitarianism.” He warned about a police state and 5g phone networks.

On December 30, 2020, the Kennedys speak out against RFK Jr antivaccine stance.”We love Bobby. He is one of the great champions of the environment. His work to clean up the Hudson River and his tireless advocacy against multinational organizations that have polluted our waterways and endangered families has positively affected the lives of countless Americans. We stand behind him in his ongoing fight to protect our environment. However, on vaccines he is wrong. . . We don’t need measles outbreaks to remind us of the value of vaccination,” wrote Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Joseph P. Kennedy II, and Maeve Kennedy McKean in Politico.

On February 12, 2021, Instagram bans RFK just after sharing false information about COVID-19 and vaccines. “We removed this account for repeatedly sharing debunked claims about the coronavirus or vaccines.”He states that his removal from Instagram was “a formula for catastrophe and a coup d etat against the first amendment.”

November 2021, RFK Jr, publishes a book that criticizes Dr. Anthony Fauci for how he handled COVID-19. Dr. Fauci at the time was the infectious disease expert. The book was called The Real Anthony Fauciothat accused the doctor of assisting in “a historic coup d’etat against Western democracy.”

On January 24, 2022, in front of the Lincoln Memorial at an anti vaccine rally, he said, “Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps to Switzerland. You could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did. Today the mechanisms are being put in place so none of us can run “

The next day, his wife Cheryl Hines replied a tweet:

“My husband’s reference to Anne Frank at a mandate rally in DC was reprehensible and insensitive. The atrocities that millions endured during the Holocaust should never be compared to anyone or anything. His opinions are not a reflection of my own.”

On January 25, 2022, RFK Jr apologizes for his antisemitic remarks. After backlash from the public and his sister, Kerry Kennedy, for his comparison to Anne Frank during his anti-vaccine speech, he issued an apology.

Then days after he announced his candidacy he posted, which got deleted:

In June 2023, Youtube said that they had removed a video of RFK Jr speaking with a podcast hosted by Jordan Peterson for spreading vaccine misinformation. Peterson is a right-wing Canadian pundit and psychologist known for his attacks on feminism and racial diversity. This podcast was for the Daily Wire, a conservative media outlet.

In June 2023, RFK said at a dinner party that Chinese and Ashkenazi Jewish people are less susceptible to COvid 19. This is an unverified and racist statement. “Covid-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people” and “the people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jewis and Chinese,” according to a video that was made public in the New York Post. It also said that the US “put hundreds of millions of dollars into ethnically targeted microbes” and labs in Ukraine collected Russian and Chinese DNA “so we can target people by race” to spare Jews.

This led to widespread accusations of antisemitism and racism.

After the backlash, he denied suggesting that COVID was deliberately engineered to spare Jewish people. He said that his words were twisted. Then he called for the New York Post to retract their article. They have not.

A democratic watchdog group called for a US House committee to uninvite Robert F. Kennedy Jr after they saw these remarks. Kyle Herrig, executive director of the Congressional Integrity Project, sent a letter to Ohio Republican Rep Jim Jordan, chairman of the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, asking him to disinvite Kennedy from a hearing after hearing the comments.

On June 27, 2023, RFK Jr claimed that vaccine research is likely responsible for HIV, Lyme disease, and the Spanish flu. He gathered a panel of health misinformation well known on a Tuesday evening for a roundtable discussion that suggested his medical conspiracy ideals would be a principle component of his campaign. He made several unfounded claims regarding the origins of infectious disease and their relationships with vaccines.

“I will end all gain of function research. It’s just a disaster, it’s given us no benefits. It’s given us everything from Lyme disease to Covid, and many other diseases. RSV, which is now one of the biggest killers of children, came out of a vaccine lab. We can go down the whole list of diseases, There’s even good evidence that even Spanish flu came from vaccine research.”

He goes on to say that “the medical research on these diseases and vaccine research has actually created some of the worst plagues in our history. Anybody who reads The River will come away pretty much convinced that HIV also came from a vaccine program, there’s plenty of evidence on that as well.”

“We removed a video from the Jordan Peterson channel for violating Youtube’s general vaccine misinformation policy, which prohibits content that alleges that vaccines cause chronic side effects, outside rare side effects that are recognized by health authorities,” Youtube said in a statement.

2024 Presidential Campaign

In order to follow his family’s legacy, he filed a statement of candidacy for the 2023 presidential election on April 6, 2023. He is running as a Democrat. He began taking a leave of absence as its chairman and chief legal councel on April 2, 2023.

He has been extremely open about his political goals. In a 2007 magazine interview with Oprah Winfrey, he said that being a father was one reason why he did not run for office until now. He did say, “If opportunities came up for me to run for office, I probably would do it.”

When campaigning he has not spoken about vaccines but said,”If anybody wants to talk to me about vaccines, I’ll talk to them.”

sources:

https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,949812-1,00.html

https://www.biography.com/history-culture/robert-f-kennedy-jr

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-jul-07-mn-19562-story.html

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/robert-kennedy-jr-arrested-protesting-jane-fonda-1255130/

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/05/08/robert-kennedy-jr-measles-vaccines-226798/

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/rfk-jr-now-presidential-candidate-ukraine-vaccines-economy/story?id=https://www.forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2023/07/18/rfk-jrs-family-denounces-claim-that-jews-chinese-are-immune-to-covid-here-are-all-the-other-conspiracies-he-promotes/?sh=4b2513b14039100247005

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/misinformation/youtube-removes-video-rfk-jr-jordan-peterson-misinformation-rcna90060

https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/22/politics/robert-f-kennedy-jr-vaccines/index.html

https://www.forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2023/07/18/rfk-jrs-family-denounces-claim-that-jews-chinese-are-immune-to-covid-here-are-all-the-other-conspiracies-he-promotes/?sh=4b2513b14039

https://people.com/politics/robert-f-kennedy-jr-controversy-timeline/

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/rfk-kennedy-anti-vaccine-panel-conspiracies-hiv-spanish-flu-1234779689/