U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sat before the senators holding his nomination in their hands on January 30, 2025, and said vaccines had nothing to do with his 2019 trip to Samoa, a journey he made months before measles swept the Pacific island nation and 83 people died. A letter he addressed to Samoa’s prime minister on January 20, 2019, contradicts his account. Kennedy, a prominent anti-vaccine activist at the time, used it to propose an examination of what had gone wrong with the country’s measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccines after two children died. The words “vaccine” or “vaccination” appear eight times.
That letter turned up among newly obtained documents that contradict what Kennedy told Congress while a bruising confirmation battle was under way. The Associated Press and The Guardian obtained and reported the documents on August 27, 2026. During that stretch, his nomination to run the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) could advance only if skeptical Republicans moved it forward.
Two senators pushed him on the point across his back-to-back confirmation hearings on Capitol Hill. At the January 29 hearing, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., heard from Kennedy that the journey had been undertaken to bring a medical informatics system to Samoa, one that would put health records into digital form and make care more efficient. The next day, Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., returned to the subject, and Kennedy said, “My purpose in going down there had nothing to do with vaccines.”
Inside the Letter to Samoa
What Kennedy wanted to examine is spelled out plainly in the letter he addressed to Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi. He opened by voicing hope that his team could be of use to Samoans, then 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. Samoa drew the anti-vaccine group’s attention in July 2018, and its representatives began contacting the government there during the suspension of the country’s immunization program.
How the Samoa Crisis Unfolded
A medical error set the crisis in motion. Two young children in Samoa died in July 2018 after receiving an MMR vaccine that had been mixed incorrectly. The two nurses responsible were charged criminally a month after the children died, and manslaughter guilt was eventually admitted by both women. Samoa’s government responded by freezing every vaccination program, a suspension of 10 months that ran until April 2019, and immunization rates collapsed.
Kennedy made the trip in May and June 2019, bringing along his wife, actress Cheryl Hines, and CHD colleague Michael Graven. He shook hands with Tuilaepa on June 1, 2019, at the 57th Independence Celebration in Mulinu’u. Measles tore through the islands months afterward, and 83 people died, most of them children younger than five. Anti-vaccine activists in Samoa had been emboldened by the visit, critics said. Senators heard Kennedy say his trip did not influence anyone’s decision about whether to vaccinate, and that he ended up in conversations with people he had never intended to meet.
The outbreak followed him toward the Cabinet. Simulated gravestones memorializing the 2019 measles victims were arranged outside the U.S. Capitol on January 29, 2025, ahead of his confirmation hearings.
How Kennedy’s Department Responded
Vaccines had no bearing on the 2019 visit, a spokesperson for HHS said, adding that the letters support no claim or insinuation that Kennedy lied under oath or to Congress — such a suggestion, the spokesperson said, is both false and defamatory.
Neither of Kennedy’s two confirmation hearings put him under oath. That distinction carries less weight than it appears to. A witness who knowingly gives materially false testimony to Congress commits a crime punishable by prison, sworn in or not, although prosecutors rarely bring such cases.
Why Congress Is Unlikely to Act
Lawmakers could seize on Kennedy’s statements to justify hearings, an impeachment inquiry, or other roadblocks, according to lawyers who specialize in Senate procedure. They described that outcome as improbable, though, in a Republican-led Congress aligned with President Donald Trump’s administration. Democrats who capture the House or the Senate in the November 2026 elections could build exactly that kind of scrutiny on the documents, those attorneys said.
A broader question that trailed Kennedy through his confirmation also draws fuel from the letter: whether his assurances matched his intentions. His anti-vaccine rhetoric had drawn criticism from lawmakers in both parties, and he spent the hearings working to convince them he supported childhood vaccination. Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., a physician, was among those he won over.
Existing vaccine policies would be preserved, Kennedy pledged during that process. Once in office, he moved to change them.
