Former US ambassador to Australia Caroline Kennedy has urged the US Senate to reject her cousin Robert F Kennedy Jr’s health secretary nomination, labelling him a “predator” who is addicted to power.
In a letter on Tuesday to senators, Caroline said that her cousin’s views on vaccines disqualify him from the role. She also gave concerning personal details about Kennedy Jr’s behaviour from their lives growing up together.
Caroline is the daughter of former Democratic US president John F Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963. Kennedy Jr is the former president’s nephew, as well as the son of former Senator Robert F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1968 during his presidential campaign event.
Nominated for the position of US health secretary by Donald Trump, Kennedy Jr will appear before the Senate finance committee on Wednesday, with a second hearing to be held in front of the Senate committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pension.
“I have known Bobby my whole life; we grew up together. It’s no surprise that he keeps birds of prey as pets because he himself is a predator,” Caroline Kennedy wrote to American senators about her cousin.
She described her cousin’s basement, garage and dorm as being an epicentre for drug use and “often a perverse scene of despair and violence”, saying that Kennedy Jr would put baby chickens and mice in blenders to feed his hawks.
She went on to say that Kennedy Jr now “preys on the desperation of parents of sick children,” as he has vaccinated his own children, but continues to discourage others from vaccinating theirs.
Caroline alleges that Kennedy Jr’s “crusade against vaccination” has served to benefit himself financially, and that he has influenced other members of the Kennedy family “down the path of drug addiction”.
Kennedy Jr has openly talked about his heroin use and pleaded guilty to taking it on a plane in 1984.
Caroline also pointed out that Kennedy Jr plans to profit off a lawsuit against pharmaceutical company Merck over Gardasil, its human papillomavirus vaccine that prevents cervical cancer. He made over $US850,000 ($1.4 million) from the arrangement in 2024.
“In other words, he is willing to enrich himself by denying access to a vaccine that can prevent almost all forms of cervical cancer and which has been safely administered to millions of boys and girls,” she said.
Before this, Caroline had warned the public about her cousin and his “dangerous” views on vaccines, but this letter is the first time she is openly commenting on his politics, saying she now feels an “obligation” to speak out due to his nomination for secretary of health.
“Unlike Bobby, I try not to speak for my father — but I am certain that he and my uncle Bobby, who gave their lives in public services, and my uncle Teddy, who devoted his Senate career to improving health care, would be disgusted,” Kennedy said.
Speaking to the wider impacts of her cousin’s character, she also said: “It’s incomprehensible to me that someone who is willing to exploit their own painful family tragedies for publicity would be put in charge of America’s life and death situations.”
The letter was obtained by The Associated Press and first reported by The Washington Post. Kennedy also read the letter in a video recording, sharing it on social media.