RFK Jr says he has 'skeletons in my closet' after sexual assault allegation

NEW YORK - Independent US presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr said on July 2 he has “so many skeletons in my closet”, when asked about an allegation in a Vanity Fair article that he sexually assaulted a former family babysitter.

Mr Kennedy also denied a picture of him posing with the barbecued carcass of a large animal - which Vanity Fair said appeared to be a dog - belonged to a canine. He said it was the carcass of a goat.

Vanity Fair said he texted the photo to a friend last year, saying the friend might enjoy a restaurant in Korea that served dog on the menu.

“Hey @VanityFair,” Mr Kennedy wrote on social media platform X, “you know when your veterinary experts call a goat a dog, and your forensic experts say a photo taken in Patagonia was taken in Korea, that you’ve joined the ranks of supermarket tabloids.”

The photo was taken in 2010, according to the digital file’s metadata, the article said, the same year Mr Kennedy was diagnosed with a parasite in his brain. He has since fully recovered, his campaign has said.

Mr Kennedy, who is running in the Nov 5 presidential election

against Democratic incumbent Joe Biden and Republican contender Donald Trump, has been called a potential election “spoiler” by standing to take votes away from both major-party candidates.

The Vanity Fair article also said that in 1998 him and his then-wife Mary Richardson hired a 23-year-old woman Eliza Cooney as their part-time babysitter, who told the magazine that Mr Kennedy groped her in the family kitchen.

Ms Cooney told Reuters on July 2 that the details in the Vanity Fair article on the assault were accurate.

When asked about the allegation, Mr Kennedy told a podcast on July 2, “I am not a church boy.”

“I had a very, very rambunctious youth,” he told podcaster Saagar Enjeti. “I said in my announcement speech that I have so many skeletons in my closet that if they could all vote, I could run for king of the world.”

When pressed if he denied the sexual assault allegation, Mr Kennedy said, “I’m not going to comment on it.”

Cash crunch

His independent presidential campaign is spending heavily, amassing steep debts and resorting to layoffs as it becomes almost singularly focused on the costly effort of placing his name on state ballots.

The troubles have left little money for events and other traditional campaign priorities, leading to a growing sense of alarm among some staff members and longtime supporters.

Fundraising has slowed, and the campaign has become reliant on Mr Kennedy’s wealthy running mate Nicole Shanahan, who in June put US$2.5 million (S$3.4 million) more into their campaign.

As the campaign struggles, allies of Mr Kennedy have been quietly raising money into a new organisation to support legal challenges to ballot access, according to records and interviews, effectively creating a separate financing operation.

The ballot litigation group – called the Ballot Freedom Fund and set up in May in Delaware by a lawyer with ties to his campaign – could ease the financial pressure on the campaign, which otherwise would have to foot legal bills itself. The group, a tax-exempt political organisation, can raise unlimited amounts of money but is not allowed to coordinate with the campaign.

The group’s formation underscores the extent to which the Kennedy campaign’s leaders increasingly see ballot access not just as necessary for his viability as a candidate, but as a rallying cry.

A spokesperson for the campaign declined to comment. Last week, the campaign sent out an email detailing its ballot-access efforts, including legal challenges in several states.

“The campaign’s aggressive ballot access operation has surpassed all its milestones to ensure the Kennedy-Shanahan ticket is on the ballot in all 50 states and the District of Columbia,” the email said. “The ballot access operation is fully funded with more than US$15 million raised.”

The Kennedy campaign’s state-by-state scramble to get on ballots is an expensive and time-consuming endeavor that requires gathering hundreds of thousands of signatures and submitting petitions to local officials. Mr Kennedy has so far officially obtained ballot access in seven states, including Michigan, a top battleground.

The campaign has paid its primary ballot access firm, Accelevate 2020, US$5.4 million in 2024, as of the end of May.

Ms Amaryllis Fox, Kennedy’s campaign manager and his daughter-in-law, said in an interview last week with NPR that his fundraising was slowing because of “the economic struggles of many of our supporters.”

Five people, including two who were let go by the campaign in recent weeks, said they had been told directly by senior campaign officials and consultants that the campaign was running out of money for everything except ballot access. One person, who insisted on anonymity because of a nondisclosure agreement, said he had been told that the campaign, as of mid-June, was down to US$600,000, after setting aside more than US$5 million for unpaid bills.

What distinguishes Mr Kennedy’s campaign from others is its access to someone who can instantly inject millions of dollars into it: Ms Shanahan, a Silicon Valley investor and lawyer who was previously married to Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

She joined the ticket in late March, providing a much-needed source of cash. Of the US$18.5 million the campaign raised in March, April and May, more than half came from Ms Shanahan – US$2 million in March and US$8 million in April. She gave barely any money to the campaign in May.

Ms Shanahan, asked in a rare television interview in June whether she would donate more to the campaign, replied, “Yeah, my goal is to make sure we are on the ballots.”

She made a major donation in June to support Kennedy, according to three people briefed on the matter, giving US$2.5 million directly to the campaign, not to the Ballot Freedom Fund. REUTERS, NYTIMES