New documents obtained by The Associated Press and The Guardian reveal that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. may have provided inaccurate testimony to Congress regarding a 2019 visit to Samoa. During his confirmation hearings, Kennedy repeatedly stated that his trip to the Pacific island nation had nothing to do with vaccines and was instead focused on introducing a medical informatics system to digitalize health records.
A letter dated January 20, 2019, addressed to the Samoan prime minister and obtained through litigation, contradicts Kennedy’s sworn statements. In the correspondence, Kennedy requested to conduct a detailed health informatics assessment of Samoa’s measles, mumps and rubella vaccines and proposed that his team investigate the deaths of two children who had received the MMR vaccine. The letter used the term vaccine or vaccination eight times. Kennedy also speculated that the deaths may have resulted from manufacturing issues with different vaccine lots.
The Department of Health and Human Services responded to inquiries by stating the visit was unrelated to vaccines and characterized claims that Kennedy lied as false and defamatory. Kennedy was not under oath during his confirmation hearing, though knowingly providing material false testimony to Congress is technically a crime that can carry prison time, regardless of oath status.
Kennedy’s Samoa visit preceded a measles outbreak that killed 83 people, predominantly children under 5. Democratic senators Edward Markey and Ron Wyden, who questioned Kennedy during his confirmation process, have accused him of lying and called for accountability. Senator Bill Cassidy, a Republican physician whose support proved crucial for Kennedy’s confirmation, acknowledged that Kennedy broke commitments made during the process, including a promise to maintain a vaccine advisory committee without changes. Kennedy subsequently removed all 17 committee members and appointed new advisers.
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