Senators demand RFK Jr.'s resignation and criminal probe over Senate testimony

Democratic senators are renewing calls for Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to resign or be removed from office, after newly surfaced documents appear to show he misled Congress during his January 2025 confirmation hearings.

At the time, several senators questioned Kennedy about a 2019 trip he took to Samoa while leading the anti-vaccine group Children's Health Defense (CHD). Months after that visit, Samoa was struck by a severe measles outbreak that killed 83 people, mostly children under five, amid vaccination rates that had fallen to as low as 31 percent following a wave of vaccine hesitancy.

During his hearings, Kennedy told senators his trip had nothing to do with vaccines, claiming he went to help introduce a medical records digitization system. But a letter he sent to Samoa's prime minister in January 2019, released Thursday, tells a different story: in it, Kennedy proposed sending a CHD team to investigate the country's MMR vaccines, referencing infant deaths that were later determined to have been caused by two nurses who mistakenly mixed the vaccine with a lethal dose of muscle relaxant.

Sen. Edward Markey said the discrepancy reflects a pattern rather than a one-off mistake. Sen. Ron Wyden called the documents proof Kennedy lied under oath and said the matter should be referred to the Department of Justice for a criminal investigation. Sen. Angela Alsobrooks said Kennedy must resign or be fired immediately, and Hawaii Governor Josh Green, who helped respond to the Samoa outbreak, repeated his call for Kennedy's resignation.

The controversy comes as the United States faces its own declining vaccination rates and measles outbreaks, which have killed two people, including a newborn, so far this year.