Documents Contradict Kennedy's Confirmation Testimony
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told senators during his confirmation hearings last year that a 2019 trip to Samoa had 'nothing to do with vaccines.' A letter he wrote before that trip, now obtained by The Associated Press and The Guardian, used the word 'vaccine' or 'vaccination' eight times.
In the letter, addressed to Samoa's prime minister, Kennedy wrote: 'I would propose my team conduct detailed health informatics assessment in Samoa of what happened with your MMR vaccines.' He also wrote that he believed the deaths of two children who had received the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine 'could have resulted from manufacturing issues.'
During his Senate confirmation hearings — a process he needed to survive with support from skeptical Republicans — Kennedy was asked about the Samoa visit on multiple occasions. When Sen. Wyden questioned him, Kennedy replied: '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, responding to Sen. Markey, he said: 'My purpose in going down there had nothing to do with vaccines.'
The Department of Health and Human Services, responding to AP questions, maintained that the Samoa visit 'was unrelated to vaccines' and called any suggestion that Kennedy lied to Congress 'not only false but outright defamatory.' HHS noted Kennedy was not under oath during the confirmation hearing. Knowingly giving material false testimony to Congress, however, is a crime regardless of whether a witness is under oath, though it is rarely prosecuted.
HHS did not make Kennedy available for an interview. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Kennedy's Samoa visit has long been one of the most contested episodes in his career. Critics have argued the trip emboldened anti-vaccine sentiment on the island, which subsequently experienced a measles outbreak that killed 83 people, mostly children under five.
Kennedy ultimately secured confirmation on a 52-48 Senate vote, winning the critical support of Sen. Bill Cassidy, the Louisiana physician who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. Cassidy said he voted yes after receiving commitments that Kennedy would not alter certain vaccine policies, including maintaining a federal vaccine advisory committee 'without changes.' Once confirmed, Kennedy removed all 17 members of that committee and installed his own advisers.
'The commitments that were made to me have been violated,' Cassidy said on CBS's 'Face the Nation' in June.
Lawyers with expertise in Senate procedure told the AP that lawmakers could, if they chose, use Kennedy's statements as grounds for hearings, an impeachment inquiry, or other obstacles. Under the current Republican-led Congress, aligned with the Trump administration, such action is considered unlikely.
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The paper trail here is unambiguous: a letter in Kennedy's own hand, eight references to vaccines, and a confirmation hearing where he denied any such purpose — repeatedly. Whatever the final legal or political reckoning, the episode illustrates a principle this outlet has long held: power leaves a paper trail, and documents do not negotiate.
For free-enterprise conservatives who backed Kennedy's confirmation on the promise of a leaner, less ideologically captured HHS, the more pressing question is institutional. Sen. Cassidy extracted specific commitments on vaccine policy and received the opposite. That is not a progressive complaint — it is a contract dispute, and the American public was a party to it.
