Newly obtained emails undermine RFK Jr.’s testimony about 2019 Samoa trip before measles outbreak

During two days of questioning during his Senate confirmation hearings last year, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. repeated the same answer.

He said the closely scrutinized trip he made to Samoa in 2019, which took place before a devastating measles outbreak, had “nothing to do with vaccines”.

Documents obtained by The Guardian and Associated Press undermine this testimony. Emails sent by U.S. embassy and United Nations staff provide, for the first time, insight into how Kennedy’s trip took place and include contemporary accounts suggesting his concerns about vaccine safety motivated the visit.

The documents have raised concerns among at least one U.S. senator that the lawyer and activist who currently runs U.S. health policy lied to Congress about his visit. Samoan officials later said Kennedy’s trip boosted the credibility of anti-vaccine activists before the measles outbreak, which sickened thousands and killed 83 people, most of them children under 5.

The revelations, which come as measles outbreaks erupt across the United States, build on earlier criticism that Kennedy’s anti-vaccine record made him unfit to serve as health secretary, a role in which he worked to radically reshape immunization policy and public perception of vaccines.

The newly leaked documents also reveal previously unknown details of the trip, including that a U.S. embassy employee helped Kennedy’s team connect with Samoan officials. Kennedy, who then led his anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense, did not publicly discuss the trip at the time, but he has since said his “purpose” in going there was not related to vaccines and “I ended up having conversations with people, some of whom I never intended to meet.” In addition to meeting with anti-vaccine activists, Kennedy met with Samoan officials, including the health minister at the time, who told NBC News that Kennedy shared his view that vaccines were unsafe. Kennedy said he went there to introduce a medical data system.

The U.S. State Department released the emails — many of them heavily redacted — following an open-records lawsuit filed with help from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

The revelations come at a time when Kennedy, as President Donald Trump’s health secretary, has used his power and enormous public influence to revise federal vaccination guidelines and raise suspicions about the safety and importance of vaccines, including the one for measles. Meanwhile, measles outbreaks in several US states have reversed decades of success in eliminating the highly contagious disease, placing the country on the verge of losing its elimination status. The latest numbers show more than 875 people in South Carolina have been infected.

Kennedy answered questions about his trip to Samoa during two Senate confirmation hearings for his nomination to be secretary of health.

“My goal in going there had nothing to do with vaccines,” he said during questioning by Democratic Sen. Edward Markey of Massachusetts during his Jan. 30, 2025, hearing.

“Does the trip have nothing to do with vaccines as you told my colleagues in the Senate of Finance yesterday? Markey asked later.

“Nothing to do with vaccines,” Kennedy responded.

One of the senators who asked Kennedy about Samoa during his confirmation hearings, Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, responded on record by saying, “Kennedy’s anti-vaccine agenda is directly responsible for the deaths of innocent children.” »

“Lying to Congress about his role in the deadly measles outbreak in Samoa only highlights the danger he now poses to families across America,” Wyden said in an email. “He and his allies will be held accountable. »

Taylor Harvey, a spokesperson for Wyden and other Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee, said making a false statement to Congress is a crime and that “casual false denials to Congress will not be swept under the rug.”

A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to emailed and texted questions.

Kennedy said his visit did not influence people’s decisions to get vaccinated or to have their children vaccinated.

“I have nothing to do with people not getting vaccinated in Samoa. I never told anyone not to get vaccinated,” he said in the 2023 documentary “Shot in the Arm.” “I didn’t go, you know, for whatever reason about it.”

Anti-vaccine activists in the United States turned their attention to Samoa in July 2018, when two babies died after receiving an injection of a poorly prepared contaminated measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, vaccine. The government paused the vaccination program for 10 months, until the following April. Vaccination rates have fallen.

Records show that at a time when vaccines were not being administered, Kennedy’s group, Children’s Health Defense, was trying to connect Kennedy with the prime minister of Samoa. A January 2019 email from Lyn Redwood, then the group’s president, to Samoan activist Edwin Tamasese asked her to “please share this letter with the Honorable Prime Minister Tuilaepa Aiono Sailele Malielegaoi for Robert Kennedy, Jr.”

About two months later, Tamasese responded to Redwood, with a copy to Kennedy and others.

“I hope all is well, I am arranging the logistics with the Prime Minister’s office and wanted to confirm how many people will be coming? I also just wanted to confirm the costs etc of the visit and how it will be managed,” he wrote.

Tamasese immediately forwarded the chain of messages to the personal and government email accounts of Benjamin Harding, then an employee of the U.S. Embassy in Apia, Samoa.

“I just sent this. I’m expecting a response tomorrow because I think it’s Sunday there. Your letter looks good,” Tamasese told Harding.

While the U.S. Embassy has acknowledged in the past that an unnamed staffer attended an event with Kennedy and anti-vaccine activists while in Samoa, records show that Harding was not a passive participant: He helped organize Kennedy’s visit and connected Kennedy’s delegation with Samoan government officials.

In a May 23, 2019 email sent to Harding’s personal email address, a staff member at the Samoan Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade wrote: “Hello Benj, I am currently awaiting the official biographical notes of Mr. Kennedy and Dr. Graven to forward to the Honorable Prime Minister and the Honorable Minister of Health for their reference. Please note that this must be sent with our official letter when requesting an appointment.”

Harding forwarded the department’s request to Dr. Michael Graven, then chief information officer at Children’s Health Defense.

Harding did not respond to messages seeking comment sent to several listed email addresses, social media accounts, a phone number attributed to his parents and a general mailbox for a company he lists as his current workplace on his LinkedIn profile.

Embassy staff received information about Harding’s involvement in the trip of Sheldon Yett, then representative for Pacific island countries to UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund.

“We now understand that the Prime Minister has invited Robert Kennedy and his team to come to Samoa to investigate the safety of the vaccine,” Yett wrote in a May 22, 2019 email to an embassy staff member based in New Zealand. “The staff member in question appears to have played a role in facilitating this.”

Two days later, a senior embassy official in Apia wrote to Scott Brown, then the US Republican president’s ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa, warning him of Kennedy’s trip and Harding’s involvement.

“The real reason Kennedy is coming is to raise awareness about vaccination, specifically some health issues associated with vaccination (from his perspective),” embassy official Antone Greubel wrote. “It turns out our own Benjamin Harding played a personal role in getting him here.” Greubel wrote that he told Harding to “stop getting further involved in this trip”, although the rest of the sentence is redacted.

Yett did not respond to questions, although he said in an email: “It was a very dark time in Samoa.”

Brown, a candidate for U.S. Senate in New Hampshire, declined to comment. Greubel referred questions to a State Department press office. A State Department spokesperson did not respond to questions about the records, saying they generally do not comment on personnel matters.

Harding left the embassy in July 2020, although he remains in Samoa, according to his LinkedIn account.

Kennedy finally visited in June 2019. During his stay, he and his wife, actress Cheryl Hines, were photographed greeting the prime minister at an Independence Day celebration. He also met with government health officials and a group of figures who have questioned vaccines, including Tamases.

The Guardian and AP found no record of Kennedy publicly discussing the purpose of his trip before measles struck. In 2021, he wrote that he had gone there to discuss “the introduction of a medical IT system” to track drug safety. He said Samoan officials “were curious to measure health outcomes following the ‘natural experiment’ created by the national vaccine respite.”

Since then, he has said the reason he was traveling to Samoa was not related to vaccines.

Redwood, the former president of Children’s Health Defense who led advocacy efforts in Samoa, is now an HHS employee, reportedly working on vaccine safety.

During the measles outbreak, Kennedy wrote a four-page letter to the Prime Minister of Samoa, suggesting without evidence that measles infections were due to a faulty vaccine and circulating other baseless theories.

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This story was reported and published jointly by The Guardian and Associated Press.