On Tuesday, Vanity Fair published an explosive piece about independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that was rife with shocking details, including allegations that he sexually assaulted a babysitter he employed and that he may have eaten a dog.
According to Vanity Fair’s reporting (which has not been verified by MSNBC), a woman named Eliza Cooney, who had been hired to babysit Kennedy’s children in 1998 when she was 23, alleged that he groped her or behaved inappropriately toward her on three occasions. Cooney told the publication that she wrote about the first incident in her diary at the time and that she had confided in her mother in 2017 during the height of the #MeToo movement. She said she had also told several of her friends about Kennedy’s alleged behavior last year, after he announced his run for president.
Kennedy did not respond to NBC News’ request for comment on the allegations. But asked about the assault allegations in an interview on “Breaking Points,” a YouTube show, he said he would not respond to the details, adding that he had a “rambunctious youth.” (Kennedy was in his 40s when the incidents are alleged to have occurred.)
“Listen, I’ve said this from the beginning: I am not a church boy,” he told the interviewer Tuesday. “I had a very, very rambunctious youth. I said in my announcement speech that I — I have so many skeletons in my closet that if they all vote, I could run for king of the world.”
A number of sensational details about Kennedy’s past have come to light in recent months as his campaign seeks to make its mark in the 2024 election.
He said the magazine was “recycling 30-year-old stories,” adding: “I’m not going to comment on the details of any of them, but it’s — you know, I am who I am.” When asked point-blank whether he was denying Cooney’s allegations, Kennedy repeated that he was not going to comment.
A number of sensational details about Kennedy’s past have come to light in recent months as his campaign seeks to make its mark in the 2024 election. In May, The New York Times reported that he had disclosed a number of medical issues in a deposition during his divorce from his second wife, including that doctors found a worm that had eaten part of his brain.
In the interview Tuesday, Kennedy not only seemed to dismiss the allegation of sexual assault, but he also denied that he had eaten a barbecued dog. Vanity Fair reported that he sent his friend a photo last year suggesting that he had sampled dog meat. Kennedy reportedly told the friend, who was traveling to Asia, that he might like a restaurant in Korea that had dog on its menu.
“The picture that they said is of me eating a dog is actually me eating a goat,” he insisted, “in Patagonia.”
