The letter Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sent to Samoa’s prime minister on January 20, 2019, used the words “vaccine” or “vaccination” eight times. Writing as a prominent anti-vaccine activist, he proposed studying what had gone awry with Samoa’s measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccines after two children died. That is not the story the U.S. health secretary told senators who controlled the fate of his nomination at his confirmation hearing on January 30, 2025, when he said his 2019 trip to Samoa had nothing to do with vaccines. The trip came months before a measles outbreak swept the Pacific island nation, killing 83 people.
The letter turned up among newly obtained documents that contradict the account Kennedy gave Congress during a bruising confirmation fight — a stretch when he needed skeptical Republicans to move his nomination to run the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) forward.
Two senators pushed him on the same question at the Capitol Hill confirmation hearing on January 30, 2025. The trip’s purpose, he told Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., was to bring a medical informatics system to Samoa — a system that would put health records into digital form and make care more efficient. When Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., circled back to the subject, Kennedy said, “My purpose in going down there had nothing to do with vaccines.”
Inside the Letter to Samoa’s Prime Minister
What Kennedy wanted to examine was spelled out plainly in his letter to Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi. His opening lines expressed hope that his team might be of use to Samoans, and he suggested that flaws in how the vaccine was manufactured might explain the deaths of the two children. “I would propose my team conduct detailed health informatics assessment in Samoa of what happened with your MMR vaccines,” he wrote.
Kennedy chaired Children’s Health Defense (CHD) at the time and acted as its top lawyer. The anti-vaccine group had turned its attention to Samoa in July 2018, reaching out to the government there while the country’s immunization program was suspended.
How the Crisis in Samoa Unfolded
A medical error set everything in motion. In July 2018, an MMR vaccine that had been mixed incorrectly killed two young children in Samoa. A month after the deaths, prosecutors filed criminal charges against the two nurses responsible, and both women eventually admitted guilt to manslaughter. Samoa’s government then froze every vaccination program for 10 months — a suspension that ran until April 2019 — and immunization rates collapsed.
His wife, actress Cheryl Hines, and CHD colleague Michael Graven traveled with Kennedy to the country in May and June 2019. He shook hands with Tuilaepa on June 1, 2019, at the 57th Independence Celebration in Mulinu’u. Measles tore through the islands months later, killing 83 people, most of them children younger than five. The visit, critics said, emboldened anti-vaccine activists in Samoa. Kennedy told senators his trip did not influence anyone’s decision about whether to vaccinate, and said he ended up in conversations with people he had never intended to meet.
The outbreak trailed him on his way to the Cabinet. Simulated gravestones memorializing the 2019 measles victims stood outside the U.S. Capitol on January 29, 2025, the day before he testified.
How Kennedy’s Department Responded
The 2019 visit was unrelated to vaccines, a spokesperson for HHS said, calling any claim or insinuation drawn from the letters that Kennedy lied under oath or to Congress both false and defamatory.
Neither of Kennedy’s two confirmation hearings put him under oath. The distinction carries less weight than it may appear: knowingly giving materially false testimony to Congress is a crime that can bring a prison sentence whether or not a witness has been sworn in, though such cases are rarely prosecuted.
Why Lawmakers Are Unlikely to Act
Kennedy’s statements could give lawmakers grounds for hearings, an impeachment inquiry or other roadblocks, according to lawyers who specialize in Senate procedure. They described that outcome as improbable in a Republican-led Congress aligned with President Donald Trump’s administration. Should Democrats capture the House or the Senate in November’s elections, those attorneys said, the documents could become the foundation for exactly that kind of scrutiny.
A broader question dogged Kennedy through his confirmation — whether his assurances matched his intentions — and the letter lands squarely on it. Criticized by lawmakers in both parties over his anti-vaccine rhetoric, he spent the hearings working to convince them he supported childhood vaccination. One of those he won over, Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., is a physician. Kennedy pledged during that process to preserve existing vaccine policies. Once in office, he moved to change them.
