A US federal agency has confirmed it has opened an investigation into Robert Kennedy Jr. after he allegedly cut the head off a dead whale and brought it home two decades ago.
The former independent presidential candidate revealed the investigation Saturday while campaigning for Donald Trump outside Phoenix.
In a 2012 interview with Town & Country magazine, Kennedy’s daughter recalled the whale incident, which recently resurfaced and was widely shared on social media. Kathleen Kennedy said that when she was 6, her father noticed a dead whale had washed up on the beach. He grabbed the chain, cut off the whale’s head, tied it to the roof of his pickup truck, and then drove five hours home.
“Every time we were speeding down the highway, whale fluids were pouring out of the windows and it was the most disgusting thing on earth,” Kathleen Kennedy recalls. “We all had polythene bags over our heads with holes in our mouths and people on the road were making obscene gestures at us, but for us it was a normal daily routine.”
A spokesman for the National Marine Fisheries Service confirmed Monday that authorities are investigating but declined to provide further details, citing a policy that prohibits commenting on open investigations. The agency, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, enforces federal laws including the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act.
Kennedy told a crowd of Trump supporters in Glendale, Arizona, that he received a letter “saying that I was being investigated for collecting a whale sample 20 years ago.”
Kennedy, who neither confirmed nor denied taking the severed whale head, said the deadline for filing charges had passed. He suggested, without providing evidence, that the investigation was linked to his support for Trump.
When questioned by reporters after his appearance, Kennedy repeatedly refused to provide further details about the investigation, saying the media wanted to talk to him about “gossip.”
“I’m not interested in conveying that attitude to the mainstream media,” Kennedy said.
The Whale Corpse is the latest dramatic episode involving Kennedy and a dead animal.
Last month, he reported that he once found a bear that had been hit by a motorist and left it in New York’s Central Park with a bicycle, unraveling a mystery that sparked much interest in the city a decade ago.
