00:00My purpose in going down there had nothing to do with vaccines.
00:03The Associated Press and The Guardian have obtained documents that contradict
00:06statements that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made during two congressional hearings in January 2025.
00:13Kennedy was seeking confirmation to his role as the head of the Department of Health and Human
00:17Services. He repeatedly told senators that a trip he took to Samoa in 2019 before a deadly
00:23measles outbreak had nothing to do with vaccines. Did it have anything to do with vaccines?
00:27No, it did not. I went there, nothing to do with vaccines.
00:31But a letter from Kennedy to Samoa's then prime minister months ahead of the visit
00:35contradicts that. The January 2019 letter uses the words vaccine or vaccination eight times.
00:42Kennedy told the prime minister he thought two deaths of young children in Samoa the previous
00:46year might have resulted from a vaccine manufacturing issue. He said he wanted his team to investigate,
00:51quote, what happened with your MMR vaccines. The prime minister responded agreeing to the plan
00:57and inviting him to come. Kennedy visited in late May 2019. Public health experts in Samoa have said
01:04their efforts to address a later measles outbreak were hampered by anti-vaccine activists, some of
01:10whom they claim were emboldened by Kennedy's visit. Knowingly giving false testimony to Congress is a crime,
01:16but it's rarely prosecuted. Still, the case is likely to raise questions about Kennedy's integrity,
01:21especially because senators have already accused him of breaking promises about how he would handle
01:27vaccine policy in office. An HHS spokesperson denied that Kennedy's visit was related to vaccines.
