Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been busy trying to tip the midterm elections in President Donald Trump’s favor even as he’s been largely absent from the agency he’s supposed to oversee, according to a leaked recording.
The secretary of health and human services has been accused of being “checked out” of the day-to-day work of responding to disease outbreaks, overseeing food and drug safety, and managing major public health programs.
Instead, he’s been narrowly focused on his own priorities, including issuing meat-heavy food recommendations and trying to “prove” that vaccines are harmful, despite a lack of scientific evidence, The New York Times reported this month.
Kennedy hit back, saying he has a packed calendar at HHS. Maybe so, but that’s not all he’s been up to, according to a new report in The Washington Post.
The former third-party candidate has also been lobbying the Libertarian Party’s congressional candidates in competitive Iowa districts to drop out of their races, in a bid to help Republicans retain control of Congress.
In one case, he encouraged the candidate to “make an agreement” with Republicans rather than mount an unsuccessful “symbolic run” for office.
“I can’t go into specifics because there’s legal prohibitions about that,” Kennedy told Rick Stewart, who is running in Iowa’s District 2, in a June 11 call. “If it’s something that you want to talk about, you know, you and I can talk about specifics.”
As a Cabinet official, Kennedy is subject to the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from using their official authority or government resources to influence elections.
Stewart, 74, provided a recording of the 12-minute call to the Post and said he’s not dropping out, despite the implied quid pro quo.
“He was very careful about the words that he used, but the whole implication is: You help us, we’ll help you,” he told the Post. “They want to get me out because I might pick up 2 or 3 percent — and if I pick up 2 or 3 percent, they think it’ll come out of the Republican pocket.”
During the call, Kennedy said he was acting as a White House “liaison” and admitted he had a personal stake in Republicans keeping control of Congress.
“I don’t want to be fighting subpoenas for the next two years of improving America’s health,” he said.
House Democrats have already signaled they plan to investigate the secretary’s efforts to restrict access to vaccines and unwind public health programs if their party takes back the House in November.
Trump’s political adviser James Blair had asked Kennedy to call Stewart and Marco Battaglia, another Libertarian candidate running in District 3, and encourage them to drop out because he’d heard they respected him, sources told the Post.
Blair did not tell Kennedy to offer them anything in exchange for withdrawing, but in his June 8 call with Battaglia, he also stressed that the Republican majority in Congress was at stake, the Post reported.
Speaking to Stewart, Kennedy compared the situation with his own decision to end his 2024 presidential campaign and endorse Trump in exchange for a cabinet-level position if his Republican opponent won.
That decision angered some Libertarians who thought Kennedy, who ran as an independent after failing to secure the Libertarian nomination, had betrayed their party’s ideals.
The White House and Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to the Post’s questions about whether White House officials had asked Kennedy to make the calls, or about how many candidates he has contacted.
The Daily Beast has also reached out for comment.
