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RFK Jr. defends himself against allegations of sexual assault at Vanity Fair

Theo

  • Author, Mike Wendling
  • Role, BBC News

Independent US presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Tuesday called an article in Vanity Fair magazine “a load of garbage” in response to several allegations, including that he sexually abused a former family’s babysitter.

Vanity Fair reported that in the late 1990s, Kennedy groped Eliza Cooney, a young college graduate who had been hired as a part-time babysitter for his children and to assist him with his work in environmental law. She was 23 at the time.

When asked specifically about this and the other allegations in question on the Breaking Points podcast, Mr. Kennedy said, “I’m not a church boy.”

“I had a very, very wild youth,” he said. “In my inaugural speech, I said I had so many skeletons in the closet that if they could all vote, I could run for king of the world.”

When asked by podcast host Saagar Enjeti about the allegations of sexual assault, Mr Kennedy said he had no comment.

The magazine also reported that he had several extramarital affairs and vigorously defended his cousin Michael Skakel, who was convicted of murdering a 15-year-old girl in Greenwich, Connecticut.

Kennedy’s campaign team alerted reporters to an article in X accusing the magazine of being in league with the Democratic Party leadership.

Discussing the article on the podcast, Mr Kennedy focused on another allegation in the story – that he posed with a grilled hot dog during a trip to Korea and later joked about it in a message to a friend.

Mr Kennedy said the photo was not taken in Korea but in the South American region of Patagonia and that the animal depicted was a goat.

Joe Hagen, a Vanity Fair reporter who had previously written a profile of Kennedy for the magazine, said the photo was evidence that Kennedy was “simultaneously mocking Korean culture, reveling in animal cruelty and needlessly jeopardizing his reputation and that of his family.”

The article also described Mr Kennedy’s alleged affairs and included details about his drug addiction in his youth, which the candidate spoke openly about during the campaign.

In the same podcast, Kennedy, the son of Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of President John F. Kennedy, said that while he was committed to running for president as an independent, “the best path to the White House for me is through the Democratic Party.”

“I think that would probably be the best choice for everyone and it’s certainly something I would consider,” he said if President Biden were to resign.

The BBC has asked Vanity Fair for comment.

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