RFK Jr. Accused Of Giving False Testimony During Congressional Hearing

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told senators his 2019 trip to Samoa “had nothing to do with vaccines.” A letter bearing his own signature says otherwise.

Quick Take

A January 2019 letter on Children’s Health Defense letterhead asked Samoa’s prime minister for a “health informatics assessment” of the country’s MMR vaccines.
Kennedy told the Senate during his January 2025 confirmation hearing that his Samoa trip “had nothing to do with vaccines.”
Samoa’s then-prime minister replied welcoming an “independent health assessment” of the nation’s MMR vaccines, according to reporting.
Lawmakers, including Senators Markey and Wyden, say the newly surfaced letter directly contradicts Kennedy’s sworn testimony.

A Letter Written Months Before the Trip Tells a Different Story

The Associated Press and The Guardian obtained a letter dated January 20, 2019, months before Kennedy’s actual visit to Samoa. In it, Kennedy asked to study “what happened with your MMR vaccines” and proposed sending a team for a detailed health assessment. The word “vaccine” or “vaccination” appears eight times in that single letter, according to the AP’s review of the document.

Kennedy’s Senate Testimony Was Direct and Repeated

During his confirmation hearing, Senator Edward Markey pressed Kennedy on why he traveled to Samoa before the deadly 2019 measles outbreak. Kennedy answered flatly: “My purpose in going down there had nothing to do with vaccines.” When pushed again, he repeated the denial: “No, it did not”. He gave nearly identical answers to Senator Ron Wyden, describing the trip instead as an effort to introduce a medical records system.

Kennedy has made this denial before. In the 2023 documentary “Shot in the Arm,” he said, “I had nothing to do with people not vaccinating in Samoa. I never told anybody not to vaccinate”. That is the same story he told under oath years later. The newly surfaced letter, written in his own hand before the trip, tells senators something else entirely.

Samoa’s Own Government Confirms the Vaccine Focus

The response from Samoa’s government adds weight to the letter. The prime minister’s office wrote back in February 2019 welcoming “the benefit of your Team’s independent health assessment of our MMR Vaccines”. That is not a vague travel itinerary. That is a foreign government confirming, in writing, that Kennedy’s own proposal centered on vaccines months before he ever set foot on the island.

Measles Killed Dozens of Children Months Later

Samoa’s measles outbreak arrived four months after Kennedy’s June 2019 visit. It killed 83 people, most of them children. Samoa’s top health official later said Kennedy misled the Senate about the crisis and the events leading up to it. That outcome is why lawmakers are not treating this as a minor paperwork dispute. A public health disaster followed the trip Kennedy insists had nothing to do with vaccines.

Lawmakers Are Now Calling It Perjury

Watchdog group American Oversight has pushed for a criminal investigation into whether Kennedy lied to Congress. Members of Congress have used blunter language in public statements, accusing the health secretary of misleading the Senate to secure his own confirmation. The Department of Health and Human Services has pushed back hard, calling the allegations “false” and “defamatory,” giving Kennedy’s defenders a ready-made rebuttal even as the paper trail grows.

Documents refute RFK Jr.'s Senate testimony about Samoa trip | AP News https://t.co/kKnx5yLEv8

— Borompanha Mao (@borompanha) August 28, 2026

Here is the plain problem for Kennedy. A sitting cabinet secretary told the United States Senate, under oath, that a trip had nothing to do with vaccines. His own letter, written before that trip, said the opposite. The foreign government he wrote to confirmed the vaccine focus in its reply. Americans do not need a law degree to see the gap between those two accounts.

Confirmation hearings exist so the Senate can trust what a nominee tells them before handing over power over the nation’s health agencies. If a health secretary’s own paper trail contradicts his sworn answers, that is not a technicality. It is the kind of question conservatives have long demanded accountability for, regardless of who sits in the chair. Congress now has the documents. What it does with them is the next chapter.