Senator Wyden Launches Investigation Into Health Secretary Kennedy Over Alleged False Testimony About 2019 Samoa Trip
Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, wrote to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on November 12 notifying him that he will face an investigation. Wyden alleges that Kennedy lied to Congress during his 2025 confirmation hearing about the purpose of a 2019 trip to the Pacific island nation of Samoa. CNN first reported the letter on Thursday.
At issue is what Kennedy told senators about that trip. He testified during his confirmation hearing that his June 2019 visit to Samoa had \"nothing to do with vaccines.\" The trip came months before a measles outbreak swept the country: Samoa's government had paused all vaccinations after two children died from improperly mixed MMR vaccines, and the nurses involved were charged with manslaughter. Immunization rates then plummeted, and the outbreak that began in September 2019 eventually reached some 5,700 cases and 83 deaths.
In his letter, Wyden cited a January 2019 letter, obtained by The Guardian and The Associated Press, in which Kennedy, then head of the group Children's Health Defense, explicitly asked Samoa's then prime minister, Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, to study \"what happened\" with the MMR vaccines and whether there were broader safety issues. In a 2021 blog post for the group, Kennedy also wrote that besides attending an independence celebration, he had met government officials to discuss monitoring systems to evaluate the safety of medical interventions, and he referenced vaccine discussions. Those accounts sit uneasily with his hearing testimony that the trip had nothing to do with vaccines.
Wyden's letter also imposed sweeping demands: Kennedy must provide all documents related to his presidential campaign and his confirmation process, and any communications between federal health officials and Children's Health Defense, the anti-vaccine group Kennedy chaired until December 2024. The letter was co-signed by Maryland Senator Angela Alsobrooks, who posted on November 4 that Kennedy \"must resign or be fired.\" The Department of Health and Human Services and Children's Health Defense did not immediately respond to CNN's requests for comment.
Knowingly giving false testimony to Congress is a crime, though it is rarely prosecuted. Democrats, who flipped both chambers in this month's midterm elections, retake control of Congress in January, when Wyden is expected to assume the Finance Committee chairmanship. Several Democrats, including newly elected senators, have promised to launch probes and possibly impeach Kennedy next year; Senator Bernie Sanders said on November 8 that he was open to impeaching the health secretary. Earlier this week, a Democratic effort to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was blocked in the House.
Related: Sen. Sanders Says He Is Open to Impeaching Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
(Source: CNN)
Source: CNN
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：美国卫生与公共服务部长 Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 官方肖像（公共领域，经 Wikimedia Commons）。 / Photo: Official portrait of U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (public domain, via Wikimedia Commons).
