Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Lied About Samoa Trip's Purpose to Congress???

Published August 27, 2026 7:04 AM PDT

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is being accused of lying to the United States Senate ... because, while he said during his confirmation hearing his trip to Samoa wasn't about vaccines, letters he apparently wrote appear to say otherwise.

Here's the deal ... the Guardian and the Associated Press obtained letters RFK Jr. wrote to Tuilaʻepa Saʻilele Malielegaoi -- the then-Prime Minister of Samoa -- in 2019 on behalf of the Children's Health Defense, the anti-vax organization RFK Jr. was part of.

In one letter to the PM, RFK Jr. mentioned vaccines eight times, including writing that he wanted to study "deaths associated with MMR vaccine" in the country and offering to perform a "detailed health informatics assessment" in Samoa about what happened with the MMR vaccine, which killed two kids. Improperly mixed doses were administered, and two nurses later pled guilty to manslaughter.

This wouldn't necessarily be an issue ... except during RFK Jr.'s Senate Confirmation Hearings to become the Secretary of Health and Human Services, he repeatedly denied his trip had anything to do with vaccines.

He said, "I went there; nothing to do with vaccines. I went there to introduce a medical informatics system that would digitalize records in Samoa and make health delivery much more efficient."

The following day, RFK Jr. said, "My purpose in going down there had nothing to do with vaccines." He was not under oath during the hearings, though it is still illegal to knowingly lie to Congress.

As you know ... a few months after RFK Jr.'s trip to Samoa, vaccine rates were still very low -- and 83 people, mostly children under 5, died from an outbreak of measles.

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said in a statement to The Guardian: "Secretary Kennedy’s visit to Samoa in 2019 was unrelated to vaccines. Any claim or insinuation based on these letters that Secretary Kennedy lied under oath or to Congress is not only false but outright defamatory."

However, the department did not respond when asked specifically about the contradiction between the confirmation hearing statements and the letters.