NEW YORK (AP) — Two Democratic senators are launching an investigation into whether Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. lied to Congress about the reason for his trip to Samoa in 2019 after the Associated Press and the Guardian published documents in August refuting his testimony.
The new investigation is part of a a wide range of investigations planned in the Trump administration after Democrats regained control of the House and Senate from Republicans in the midterm elections.
Senators Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Angela Alsobrooks, D-Md., said in a letter On Wednesday, Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit group known for its anti-vaccine activism and formerly chaired by Kennedy, announced it was opening an investigation.
Lawmakers asked the group for a wide range of documents related to Kennedy’s trip to Samoa, his 2024 presidential campaign and his Senate confirmation process. The letter also requested all communications between the group and federal government officials since President Donald Trump’s second term began in January 2025. Senators gave the group a Dec. 4 deadline to comply.
AP and Guardian reporting from August showed that while Kennedy repeatedly told lawmakers who held the key to his confirmation last year that his visit to Samoa before a deadly measles outbreak had “nothing to do with vaccines,” a letter he sent to the Samoan prime minister before the trip on Children’s Health Defense letterhead showed otherwise. In the letter, Kennedy used the words vaccine or vaccination eight times.
“We intend to hold Secretary Kennedy accountable for the grave harm he has caused to vulnerable children,” Wyden and Alsobrooks wrote in their letter. “We also intend to hold him accountable for any false statements made to Congress, a crime that undermines the Senate’s ability to carry out its constitutional functions.”
The Department of Health and Human Services maintained that the visit to Samoa “had nothing to do with vaccines.” In response to an AP investigation in August, he said that “any assertion or insinuation based on these letters that Secretary Kennedy lied under oath or to Congress is not only false but downright defamatory.”
Kennedy was not under oath during his confirmation hearing. Knowingly giving false testimony to Congress is a crime which is punishable by imprisonment whether or not the person takes the oath, although it is rarely prosecuted.
Spokespeople for Children’s Health Defense and HHS did not immediately respond to requests for comment Thursday.
Wyden is expected to chair the Senate Finance Committee, which oversees Kennedy’s health department, when Democrats take back Congress in January. Alsobrooks serves on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which also oversees the department.
The same senators on Wednesday announced a separate investigation in hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts allegedly given to Kennedy last year by a donor and former employee.
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