GLENDALE, Ariz. – Former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said on Saturday that the whale was being investigated to collect a sample.
““I got a letter from the National Marine Fisheries Institute saying they’re investigating me because I collected a whale sample 20 years ago,” Kennedy said during former President Donald Trump’s campaign rally in Glendale, Arizona last week.
In a response letter, Kennedy said he unreasonably linked the National Marine Fisheries Service to the whale deaths and called for an investigation by the agency.
“This is related to the arming of our government against political opponents.
Kennedy did not go into detail about the whale incident, but his daughter previously described a whale incident 30 years ago.
Her daughter Kathleen “Kick” Kennedy, 36, was featured in the 2012 article. Town & Country magazine when he was 6 years old, his father cut off the head of a beached dead whale with a chain and tied it to the family’s car on the way home.
“Every time I accelerated on the freeway, whale juice would pour out of the car’s windows, and it was the rankest thing on the planet,” he said. “We all had plastic bags with mouth holes over our heads and people on the highway would give us the finger, but it was a normal day-to-day business for us.”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s comments came on the campaign trail with the former Hawaii representative. Tulsi Gabbard for Trump at Arizona Christian University. Kennedy He supported Trump in August and has since been on the campaign trail urging supporters to support the former president.
Kennedy told NBC News after the program that he had never killed a whale.
The National Marine Fisheries Service, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, did not immediately respond to a request for comment or confirmation Saturday night.
When asked by a reporter after a campaign event about the details of the investigation, Kennedy said he would “not talk about the incident” but instead about “serious policy issues.” “I’m not interested in feeding this feature of the mainstream media,” he said, criticizing the media for wanting to discuss “gossip nonsense.”
After the 2012 story resurfaced last month, an environmental group called on federal officials to investigate the incident.
“Kennedy may think that his name and privilege means that the rules don’t apply to him, but if he had an ounce of integrity left, he would have turned over this whale skull and illegally harvested wildlife parts to the authorities,” said Brett Hartle. , political director of the Action Fund for Biological Diversity, a news reto rent. “If he doesn’t, NOAA law enforcement should open an investigation and potentially press charges against him.”
Kennedy earlier faced a blow said he once left a young dead bear in Central Park after planning to skin a bear for meat in August. “We thought it would be fun for whoever found it,” she said in a video, describing how she ultimately decided to make the puppy look like it had been hit by a bicycle in the park.
The New York State Department of Environmental Protection said at the time it is against the law to dispose of a dead bear As Kennedy said. The statute of limitations for such crimes punishable by a fine is one year.
Alex Tabet reported from Glendale, Arizona and Megan Lebovitz from Washington