Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the son of assassinated Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, has filed election paperwork to run for president in 2024 as a Democrat.
Kennedy, 69, filed a statement of candidacy Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission.
The third child of RFK and Ethel Kennedy, Kennedy once worked as an environmental lawyer but has for the past 15 years worked in the anti-vaccine movement, creating his own charity, Children’s Health Defense. His work with the movement has been described by some public health experts and members of his own family as misleading and dangerous, The Associated Press reported.
Kennedy released a book in 2021, “The Real Anthony Fauci,” in which he accused Fauci, the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, of assisting in “a historic coup d’etat against Western democracy.”
His anti-vaccine views have been criticized by his sister Kerry Kennedy, who in 2021 called him “very dangerous” on the issue.
In 2019, his sister Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, brother Joseph P. Kennedy II and niece Maeve Kennedy McKean said in an op-ed in Politico that his views were “tragically wrong” and have “deadly consequences”.
Kennedy, the nephew of slain President John F. Kennedy, said on Twitter in March that he was considering a run for the presidency.
At the time, he said: “If I run, my top priority will be to end the corrupt merger between state and corporate power that has ruined our economy, shattered the middle class, polluted our landscapes and waters, poisoned our children, and robbed us of our values and freedoms.”
Kennedy married actress Cheryl Hines in 2014 and the couple lives in Los Angeles.
Kennedy, like his late uncle Sen. Ted Kennedy, will likely be taking on a sitting president in a run for office. President Joe Biden has hinted he will make an announcement sometime in late summer on his intention to run for reelection.
Ted Kennedy challenged sitting President Jimmy Carter in the 1980 presidential election.
Last month, another Democrat, Marianne Williamson, joined the presidential race.
