Caroline Kennedy slams RFK Jr. as 'predator' before confirmation hearing
In a scathing letter Tuesday, Caroline Kennedy warned senators about her cousin, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., calling him a "predator."
The letter was sent to lawmakers ahead of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Senate confirmation hearing for the role of secretary of the Department of Health & Human Services, which is scheduled for Wednesday.
Caroline Kennedy – a former U.S. ambassador to both Australia and Japan and the last living child of former President John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s uncle – called the role "an enormous responsibility, and one that Bobby is unqualified to fill."
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Caroline Kennedy wrote that she feels "an obligation to speak out" now that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been nominated for "a position that would put him in charge of the health of the American people."
"I have known Bobby my whole life; we grew up together," she wrote in the letter, in part. "It's no surprise that he keeps birds of prey as pets because he himself is a predator."
Caroline Kennedy said she watched family members follow her cousin "down the path of drug addiction," and shared disturbing details of his alleged behavior with animals.
"His basement, his garage, and his dorm room were the centers of the action where drugs were available, and he enjoyed showing off how he put baby chickens and mice in the blender to feed his hawks. It was often a perverse scene of despair and violence," she wrote.
She also accused Robert F. Kennedy Jr. of being "addicted to attention and power," and said he "preys on the desperation of parents of sick children – vaccinating his own children while building a following by hypocritically discouraging other parents from vaccinating theirs."
The Kennedy family continued to speak out on Tuesday with RFK Jr.'s niece revealing what she says are private email exchanges in which her uncle made unsubstantiated claims about Covid-19 vaccines at the height of the pandemic.
Kerry Kennedy-Meltzer, MD, a primary care physician at NYC Health + Hospitals in New York, shared two years' worth of emails starting in 2020 with STAT News, a health and medical website. The news site published them just hours before RFK Jr.'s Senate confirmation hearing, and Meltzer confirmed their authenticity with ABC News -- though she declined to comment further on them.
At times in the exchanges, Meltzer, citing her own experience working in an ICU, tried to convince her uncle of the risks faced by unvaccinated Covid-19 patients.
In an email dated Feb. 12, 2022, Meltzer wrote: “Bobby, I’ve been working in the ICU for the past two weeks and have taken care of too many people who have died, or will likely die soon, from Covid. None of them are vaccinated. I watched a daughter collapse on the floor while we pronounced her mother’s time of death. I held the hand of a man who was about to get intubated. He looked at me with tears in his eyes, asking me to please save him. He will likely die in the coming days.”
Later that day, Kennedy responded and cited unsubstantiated claims: “Kerry. I don’t dismiss your experience but it differs with data we are seeing from Israel, UK and other nations with much more reliable data systems. You might want to ask your hospital to publish this data so that people can take it seriously. That problem is that CDC has been using corrupt metrics to assess who is vaccinated. CDC counts all people as ‘unvaccinated’ until two weeks after their second shot. We have seen dramatically increased cases and mortalities in the two weeks following the first shot and CDC counts these as unvaccinated.”
In the emails, RFK Jr. also asserts his beliefs that vaccines cause autism, a link that has not been established.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. did not respond to ABC News' request for comment on Tuesday night.
While Meltzer's aim was to help dissuade her uncle's confirmation, according to STAT News, she stopped shy of overtly condemning the HHS secretary nominee.
Caroline Kennedy's letter, however, further accused her cousin of "[continuing] to grandstand off my father's assassination, and that of his own father," saying former President Kennedy "would be disgusted" by his actions.
"The American health care system, for all its flaws, is the envy of the world," Caroline Kennedy wrote. "Its doctors and nurses, researchers, scientists, and caregivers are the most dedicated people I know. Every day, they give their lives to heal and save others."
"They deserve better than Bobby Kennedy – and so do the rest of us. I urge the Senate to reject his nomination," she concluded.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. did not respond to questions about the letter when asked multiple times while visiting the Hill on Tuesday.
ABC News' Will McDuffie and Eric Strauss contributed to this report.