Senators probing RFK Jr.'s testimony on Samoa trip after AP and Guardian showed documents refute it

NEW YORK (AP) — Two Democratic senators are launching an investigation into whether Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. lied to Congress about his reason for a 2019 trip to Samoa after The Associated Press and The Guardian published documents in August refuting his testimony .

The new inquiry is one of a vast array of investigations planned into the Trump administration after Democrats regained control of the House and Senate from Republicans in the midterm elections.

Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Angela Alsobrooks, D-Md., said in a letter Wednesday to Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit group known for anti-vaccine activism that was formerly chaired by Kennedy, that they were starting an investigation.

The lawmakers asked the group for a broad range of documents related to Kennedy’s Samoa travel, his 2024 presidential campaign and his Senate confirmation process.

AP and Guardian reporting in 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 ahead of the trip on CHD letterhead showed otherwise. In the letter, Kennedy used the words vaccine or vaccination eight times.

The Department of Health and Human Services has maintained that the Samoa visit “was unrelated to vaccines.” In response to an AP inquiry in August, it said “any claim or insinuation based on these letters that Secretary Kennedy lied under oath or to Congress is not only false but outright defamatory.”

Wyden is expected to chair the Senate Finance Committee, which has oversight into Kennedy’s health department, when Democrats retake Congress in January.