Newly obtained emails undermine RFK Jr.’s testimony about 2019 Samoa trip before measles outbreak

Over two days of questions during his Senate confirmation hearing last year, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. repeated the same answer.

He said the 2019 trip he took to Samoa, which came before a devastating measles outbreak, had “nothing to do with vaccines” under close scrutiny.

Documents obtained by The Guardian and The Associated Press undermine that testimony. Emails sent by U.S. Embassy and United Nations staffers provide an inside look at how Kennedy’s trip came about for the first time and contemporaneous accounts of how his concerns about vaccine safety prompted the visit.

The documents have raised concerns from at least one US senator that the lawyer and activist now leading America’s health policy lied to Congress during the visit. Samoan officials later said Kennedy’s trip bolstered the credibility of anti-vaccination activists ahead of the measles outbreak, which sickened thousands of people and killed 83, mostly children under the age of 5.

The revelation of the measles outbreak across the US builds on previous criticism that Kennedy’s anti-vaccine record disqualified him from serving as health secretary, in which he has worked to radically change policy and public perception of vaccines.

The newly declassified documents also reveal previously unknown details of the trip, including how a US embassy employee helped Kennedy’s team contact Samoan officials. Kennedy, who runs his anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense, did not discuss the trip publicly at the time, but he has since said that his “purpose” for going there was unrelated to vaccines and that “I talked to people, some of whom I had no intention of meeting.” In addition to meeting with anti-vaccine activists, Kennedy met with Samoan officials, including the health minister, who told NBC News that Kennedy shared his view that vaccines are not safe. Kennedy said he was there to introduce a medical data system.

The US State Department turned over the emails — many of which have been heavily redacted — as a result of an open records lawsuit brought with the help of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

The revelations come at a time when Kennedy, as President Donald Trump’s health secretary, has used his power and vast public influence to overhaul federal vaccine guidelines and cast doubt on the safety and importance of vaccines, including the measles vaccine. Meanwhile, measles outbreaks in several US states have rolled back decades of success in eradicating the highly contagious disease, putting the country on the brink of losing its eradication status. The latest data shows that more than 875 people have been infected in South Carolina.

‘Nothing to do with vaccines’

Kennedy addressed questions about his trip to Samoa during two Senate confirmation hearings for his appointment as health secretary.

“My purpose in going there had nothing to do with vaccines,” he said in response to questions from Democratic Sen. Edward Markey of Massachusetts at his Jan. 30, 2025, hearing.

“As you told my colleagues in Senate Finance yesterday that travel had nothing to do with vaccines?” Markie asked later.

Kennedy replied, “Nothing to do with vaccines.

One of the senators who questioned Kennedy about Samoa during his confirmation hearing, Sen. Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, responded on the records, “Kennedy’s anti-vaccine agenda is directly responsible for the deaths of innocent children.”

“Liing to Congress about his role in the deadly measles outbreak in Samoa only underscores the danger he now poses to families across America,” Wyden said in an email. “He and his associates will be held responsible.”

Taylor Harvey, a spokesman for Wyden and other Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee, said that making false statements to Congress is a crime and that “casual, false denials to Congress will not be swept under the rug.”

A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to questions sent by email and text message.

Kennedy has said that his visit did not influence people’s decisions about whether to vaccinate themselves or their children.

“I had nothing to do with people in Samoa not vaccinating. I never told anyone not to vaccinate,” he told the 2023 documentary “Shot in the Arm.” “You know, I didn’t go there for any reason to do that.”

Stopped vaccination program

Anti-vaccine activists in the United States took interest in Samoa in July 2018, when two children died after being injected with an incorrectly formulated measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, vaccine. The government has stopped the vaccination program for 10 months till next April. Vaccination rates dropped.

Records show that at a time when no vaccines were administered, Kennedy’s group, Children’s Health Defense, was trying to connect Kennedy with the Samoan prime minister. An email from the group’s then-president, Lynn Redwood, to Samoan activist Edwin Tamases in January 2019 said, “Please share this letter to the Honorable Prime Minister Tuilepa Aiono Sele Malilegaoi for Robert Kennedy, Jr.”

About two months later, Tamasese wrote to Redwood with a cc: Kennedy et al.

“Hope all is well, organizing logistics with PMs office and wanted to confirm how many people are coming? Also just wanted to confirm costs etc for the visit and how it will be handled,” he wrote.

Tamasese immediately forwarded a series of messages to the personal and government email accounts of Benjamin Harding, then an employee of the US Embassy in Apia, Samoa.

“Just sent it. Expecting a reply as tomorrow is Sunday. Your letter looks good,” Tamases told Harding.

Although the U.S. Embassy previously admitted that an unnamed employee attended an event when Kennedy and anti-vaccination activists were in Samoa, records show that Harding was not a passive participant: he helped arrange Kennedy’s visit and connect the Kennedy delegation with Samoan government officials.

On May 23, 2019, in an email to Harding’s personal email address, an employee of the Samoan Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade wrote: “Hi Benz, Currently awaiting the official bio-notes of Mr. Kennedy and Dr. Graven to be sent to the Honorable Prime Minister and the Honorable Minister of Health. Please do not make our official request to send this letter for their reference. Appointment.”

Dr. Harding requested the ministry. Michael Graven, who was then the chief information officer for Children’s Health Defense.

Harding did not respond to messages seeking comment sent to multiple listed email addresses, social media accounts, a phone number listed for his parents and a general mailbox at the company he lists as his current workplace on his LinkedIn profile.

Embassy staff received a tip about Harding’s involvement in the trip from Sheldon Yate, then the representative for Pacific Island countries at UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund.

“We now understand that the Prime Minister has invited Robert Kennedy and his team to Samoa to investigate the safety of the vaccine,” Yett wrote in a May 22, 2019, email to embassy staff in New Zealand. “The staff member in question appears to have played a role in facilitating this.”

Two days later, a top embassy staff member in Apia wrote to Scott Brown, the Republican US president’s ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa, alerting him to Kennedy’s trip and Harding’s involvement.

“Kennedy’s real reason for coming was to raise awareness about vaccination, especially some of the health concerns associated with vaccination (from his perspective),” wrote embassy official Anton Greubel. “Our own Benjamin Harding played some part in his personal capacity in bringing him here.” Greubel wrote that he told Harding to “cease and desist from any further involvement in this trip”, although the rest of the sentence has been redacted.

Yete did not respond to questions, though he said in an email, “It was a very miserable time in Samoa.”

Brown, who is running for the U.S. Senate in New Hampshire, declined to comment. Grubel referred questions to the State Department’s press office. A State Department spokeswoman did not respond to questions about the records, as is normal practice for them not to comment on personnel matters.

Harding left the embassy in July 2020, although he remains in Samoa, according to his LinkedIn account.

Kennedy finally left in June 2019. While there, he and his wife, actor Cheryl Hines, were photographed congratulating the Prime Minister at the Independence Day celebrations. He also met with government health officials as well as a group of vaccine skeptics, including Tamase.

The Guardian and the AP could find no record of Kennedy publicly discussing the purpose of his trip until after the measles outbreak. In 2021, he wrote that he was there to discuss “the introduction of a medical information system” to track drug safety. He said Samoan officials were “keen to measure health outcomes after the ‘natural experiment’ created by national relief from vaccines.”

Since then, he said his reason for going to Samoa was unrelated to vaccination.

Redwood, the former child health defense chairman who had early access to Samoa, is now an employee at HHS, reportedly working on vaccine safety.

During the measles outbreak, Kennedy wrote a four-page letter to the Prime Minister of Samoa suggesting without evidence that measles infections were caused by defective vaccines and other baseless theories.

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This story was jointly reported and published by The Guardian and The Associated Press.