Robert F Kennedy Jr

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      Robert F Kennedy Jr vows to investigate January 6 prosecutions for political bias

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      Robert F Kennedy Jr, the lawyer, conspiracy theorist and independent candidate for US president, vowed to investigate “whether prosecutorial discretion was abused for political ends” in convictions of January 6 rioters – just one day after his campaign said a fundraising reference to such prisoners as “activists” was an unfortunate error.In a statement on Friday, Kennedy said that as president, he would “appoint a special counsel – an individual respected by all sides – to investigate whether prosecutorial discretion was abused for political ends in this case, and I will right any wrongs that we discover”.On 6 January 2021, Donald Trump supporters attacked the US Capitol after the former president told them to “fight like hell” to block certification of his defeat by Joe Biden. Nine deaths are linked to the attack, including law enforcement suicides. More than 1,300 arrests have been made and nearly 1,000 convictions secured, some for seditious conspiracy. Some rioters have been held before trial.Trump was impeached for inciting an insurrection but acquitted when enough Senate Republicans stayed loyal. Now the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Trump has called January 6 prisoners “hostages” and “unbelievable patriots”; promoted a rendition of the national anthem performed in a Washington jail; and said that if re-elected, he will “free the January 6 hostages being wrongfully imprisoned”.Earlier this week, the Kennedy campaign ran into a media firestorm when a fundraising email referred to “J6 activists sitting in a Washington DC jail cell stripped of their constitutional liberties” and compared them to Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency whistleblower who lives in exile in Russia, and Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder held in the UK while the US seeks extradition.Amid uproar, a Kennedy spokesperson said: “That statement was an error that does not reflect Mr Kennedy’s views. It was inserted by a new marketing contractor and slipped through the normal approval process.”But on Friday, Kennedy indicated that he does think some January 6 prisoners might be activists wrongly imprisoned.“January 6 is one of the most polarising topics on the political landscape,” he said. “I am listening to people of diverse viewpoints on it in order to make sense of the event and what followed. I want to hear every side.“It is quite clear that many of the January 6 protesters broke the law in what may have started as a protest but turned into a riot. Because it happened with the encouragement of President Trump, and in the context of his delusion that the election was stolen from him, many people see it not as a riot but as an insurrection.“I have not examined the evidence in detail, but reasonable people, including Trump opponents, tell me there is little evidence of a true insurrection. They observe that the protesters carried no weapons, had no plans or ability to seize the reins of government, and that Trump himself had urged them to protest ‘peacefully’.”That statement was in accordance with others, collected by NBC News, in which Kennedy has questioned or dismissed the severity of events on January 6.View image in fullscreenFurthermore, the House committee that investigated January 6 detailed how protesters did carry weapons, some armed with guns; how Trump whipped up the crowd before belatedly appealing for calm; and how the riot followed lengthy attempts to find a legalistic way to keep Trump in power.“Like many reasonable Americans,” Kennedy continued, “I am concerned about the possibility that political objectives motivated the vigour of the prosecution of the J6 defendants, their long sentences, and their harsh treatment.”Echoing claims by Trump and Republicans in Congress, he said: “That would fit a disturbing pattern of the weaponisation of government agencies … against political opponents. One can, as I do, oppose Donald Trump and all he stands for, and still be disturbed by the weaponisation of government against him.”Kennedy polls in double figures, has attracted millions of dollars in donations, has named a running mate (Nicole Shanahan, an attorney) and is seeking ballot access in key states. But he remains most likely to act as a spoiler in November, siphoning votes from both candidates but, many observers think, doing more damage to Biden.In his Friday statement, Kennedy claimed to be following the example of the second US president, John Adams, “a staunch patriot” who in 1770 took on an unpopular task, “defend[ing] the British soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre”.Kennedy also said Democrats as well as Republicans were “using J6 to pour fuel on the fire of America’s divisions”, and charged both parties with “demonising … opponents as apocalyptic threats to democracy”.Many observers, however, view Kennedy himself as a threat to US democracy.On Friday, before Kennedy issued his statement about January 6, Rahna Epting of Move On, a progressive advocacy group, and Matthew Bennett of Third Way, a centre-left group, described to reporters plans to switch from campaigning against No Labels, the centrist group that dropped out of the presidential race this week, to targeting Kennedy and his campaign.“I want to be clear,” Epting said. “Robert Kennedy Jr’s ill-fated run for the presidency is helping put Donald Trump back in the White House and we’re going to work to stop that. Just as we organised against No Labels we’re going to organise against Robert Kennedy Jr. We’re going to let folks know we can’t win, but he can help Trump win.” More

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      Robert F Kennedy campaign calls January 6 rioters ‘activists’ in email

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      A spokesperson for the independent US presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr said a passage in a fundraising email that called January 6 prisoners “activists … stripped of their constitutional liberties” was the result of an error by an outside contractor.“That statement was an error that does not reflect Mr Kennedy’s views,” the spokesperson, Stefanie Spear, told NBC News, which first reported the fundraising email. “It was inserted by a new marketing contractor and slipped through the normal approval process.”The email, sent by Team Kennedy, asked for “help … call[ing] out the illiberal actions of our very own government”.It also said: “This is the reality that every American citizen faces – from Ed Snowden to Julian Assange to the J6 activists sitting in a Washington DC jail cell stripped of their constitutional liberties.”Snowden, who leaked information about National Security Agency surveillance to outlets including the Guardian, has lived in Russia for 10 years. Assange founded WikiLeaks, which leaked US national security information, also to outlets including the Guardian. Jailed in the UK since April 2019, he is fighting extradition to the US.On 6 January 2021, Congress was attacked by a mob Donald Trump told to “fight like hell” to block certification of his election defeat by Joe Biden, in support of Trump’s electoral fraud lie. Nine deaths are now linked to the riot, including law enforcement suicides. More than 1,300 arrests have been made and nearly a thousand convictions secured, some for seditious conspiracy.Trump was impeached for inciting an insurrection, but acquitted when enough Senate Republicans stayed loyal. As the presumptive GOP nominee for president this year, he has called January 6 prisoners “hostages” and “unbelievable patriots” and featured at rallies a rendition of the national anthem by some held in a Washington jail.Trump has said that if re-elected, he will “free the January 6 hostages being wrongfully imprisoned”.An attorney by training, Kennedy, 70, is the son of a US attorney general, Robert F Kennedy, and nephew of a former president, John F Kennedy. Though his independent campaign is unlikely to win the White House, he has polled strongly. If elected, he has said, he will pardon Snowden and Assange and “look at individual cases” regarding January 6.Kennedy has also said Biden presents “a much worse threat to democracy” than Trump, because of supposed suppression of free speech regarding the coronavirus pandemic – a comment Kennedy, a prominent vaccine skeptic and Covid conspiracy theorist, then claimed was deceptively edited.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOn Thursday, reporting the Team Kennedy email that called January 6 prisoners “activists”, NBC detailed how just 15 such Trump supporters are being held without having been convicted.“Most of them are credibly accused of violence against law enforcement officials,” NBC said.Examples included two prisoners who have killed people, one “charged with setting off an explosive in a tunnel full of police officers” during the Capitol attack and one “charged with conspiring to kill the FBI employees who worked on his case, a plot that allegedly unfolded after his initial pretrial release”. More

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      Robert F Kennedy Jr calls Biden ‘much worse threat to democracy’ than Trump

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      After Donald Trump said that he loved how Robert F Kennedy Jr was running for president, the independent candidate called Joe Biden “a much worse threat to democracy” than Trump, citing the Biden White House’s involvement in a US supreme court case focused on social media.A noted anti-vaxxer who has peddled conspiracy theories, Kennedy currently faces an uphill task to get on enough state ballots, though on Monday his campaign said his name would appear on the ballot in the crucial state of North Carolina.Both the Republican and Democratic parties have increasingly seen Kennedy as a threat in the November election over fears that he could siphon off enough votes to swing the election. It remains unclear whose support base Kennedy might tap into. Historically a Democrat with a strong environmental record, Kennedy has drifted rightwards on various issues and his anti-vaccine views could attract Trump supporters.Kennedy’s remarks in an interview on CNN on Monday centered on the pending supreme court case Murthy v Missouri, which tests the limits of how much the government can pressure social media companies to remove content.The case comes out of efforts by the Biden administration to push social media platforms to take down false posts about the Covid-19 pandemic and the 2020 presidential election that Biden won and which Trump has consistently lied was stolen from him.In oral arguments before the court last month, justices appeared skeptical of arguments in favor of limiting contacts between government officials and social media companies, a practice known as “jawboning” that some argue is tantamount to censorship.Kennedy told CNN that Biden “has used the federal agencies to censor political speech”.“I can make the argument that President Biden is the much worse threat to democracy, and the reason for that is President Biden is the first candidate in history, the first president in history, that has used the federal agencies to censor political speech … to censor his opponent,” Kennedy told the outlet.He did not address the more than 80 criminal charges pending against Trump for trying to forcibly overturn the outcome of his defeat to Biden, improperly retaining classified government materials after the Republican left the White House and hush-money payments to an adult film actor who has claimed to have engaged in extramarital sex with him.Kennedy also did not address the multimillion-dollar civil penalties Trump is facing for business practices deemed fraudulent or a rape claim that a judge has determined to be substantially true.Kennedy is averaging close to 10% in polling from the Hill/Decision Desk HQ. That makes him the highest polling third-party candidate in a presidential race since the businessman Ross Perot in 1992, according to the Hill, citing a RealClearPolitics national average analysis.The Democratic national committee on Monday excoriated Kennedy for his remarks about the Democratic incumbent.“With a straight face Robert F Kennedy Jr said that Joe Biden is a bigger threat to democracy than Donald Trump because he was barred from pushing conspiracy theories online,” Mary Beth Cahill, a Democratic national committee senior adviser, said in a statement.Cahill accused Kennedy of merely seeking to be a “spoiler candidate” and – referring to Trump’s Make America great again slogan – said he pushed “his Maga talking points in prime time”.Cahill said there was “no comparison” between Biden and Trump, whose supporters mounted the deadly January 6 attack on the US Capitol in early 2021. She also alluded to how Trump has promised to be dictator on “day one” if returned to the presidency.Notably, as NBC pointed out, Cahill previously served as chief of staff for Kennedy’s uncle, the late US senator Ted Kennedy.Her remarks criticizing Kennedy came after other members of his family had visited the White House to celebrate St Patrick’s Day without him.His interview on CNN came a few days after Trump – in a rare show of political equilibrium – joined Democrats in attacking Kennedy’s nascent candidacy, casting him as a liberal in disguise who was more “radical left” than Biden.But Trump also made it a point to say he supported Kennedy’s campaign because he was likely to divert more votes from Biden than from him.“It’s great for Maga,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform. “I love that he is running!” More

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      Robert F Kennedy Jr claims he qualifies for ballot in swing state North Carolina

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      Robert F Kennedy Jr, the independent candidate for the US presidency, said on Monday he has qualified for the ballot in North Carolina – which will be a key state in the November election battle between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.“We have the field teams, volunteers, legal teams, paid circulators, supporters and strategists ready to get the job done,” said Kennedy’s campaign press secretary, Stefanie Spear.Kennedy, 70, is an environmental lawyer turned vaccine skeptic and conspiracy theorist who has campaigned with reference to his famous family – his father was the US attorney general and New York senator Robert F Kennedy and his uncle was John F Kennedy, the 35th president.Kennedy Jr now says he has enough signatures to qualify for the ballot in five states, the others being Utah, New Hampshire, Hawaii and Nevada.Only Utah has confirmed his place on its ballot. Nevada is also a battleground state, but Kennedy’s ballot access may be in question there, as he secured it before naming his running mate.That announcement last week saw Nicole Shanahan, a 38-year-old tech lawyer, join the Kennedy ticket.Polling generally shows Biden and Trump closely matched and Kennedy clear of other candidates outside the major parties, enjoying double-digit support, with the potential to act as a spoiler.Debate continues about whether Biden or Trump stands to lose most votes to Kennedy. Democrats have historical reason to be fearful, given recent election results.In 2000, Ralph Nader took votes from Al Gore as the former vice-president was beaten by George W Bush in a contentious, knife-edge election that came down to a legally contested result in Florida. In 2016, Jill Stein showed strongly as Hillary Clinton lost narrowly to Trump in a number of battleground states.The Biden campaign has created a team dedicated to countering Kennedy. In that vein, a spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee recently claimed Republicans were “working to prop up third-party candidates like Robert Kennedy Jr to make them stalking horses for Donald Trump”, adding: “We’re going to make sure voters are educated and we’re going to make sure all candidates are playing by the rules.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBiden’s campaign has also trumpeted endorsements from Kennedy family members.On Monday, Kennedy’s sister, Rory Kennedy, told MSNBC: “I love my brother, and it pains me to come out against him, but I am very concerned with the stakes in this election, and I’m very concerned from the polls I’m seeing that he takes many more votes from Biden than he does from Trump.“And I think this election is going to come down to a handful of votes in a handful of states, and I’m concerned that his campaign and running for office as an independent is going to lead to Trump’s election.“And I feel that that will be catastrophic, honestly, for not just our country, but for the world. So, I feel that the stakes couldn’t be higher, frankly. So, you know, I would love more than anything to sit out on the sidelines on this one and not be in this position, but I don’t feel like I can do that.” More

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      Robert F Kennedy Jr names tech lawyer Nicole Shanahan as 2024 running mate

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      Robert F Kennedy Jr selected Nicole Shanahan, a tech attorney and wealthy philanthropist, as his running mate in an independent campaign that could upset the 2024 race for the White House.Kennedy, an environmental attorney who gained notoriety as a vaccine sceptic and conspiracy theorist, announced his pick at a campaign event on Tuesday in Oakland, California, where Shanahan was born.In a nearly hour-long, winding speech, Kennedy cited Shanahan’s career in technology as an asset for the campaign, Kennedy said she had “deep inside knowledge of how big tech uses AI to manipulate” voters.Shanahan was the founder and CEO of the Palo Alto legal tech firm ClearAccessIP before selling the company in 2020. She was also a fellow at Stanford Law School’s center for legal informatics.“I managed to put a technologist at the forefront,” Kennedy said. “I found a vice-president who shares my indignation about the participation of big tech as a partner in the censorship, surveillance, and the information warfare that our government is currently waging against the American people.”Kennedy, 70, a scion of the US political dynasty that includes former president John F Kennedy, also presented Shanahan, 38, as a fresh and youthful voice in a presidential contest between 81-year-old Joe Biden and 77-year-old Donald Trump.“There’s a growing number of millennials and gen Z Americans who have lost faith in their future and lost their pride in our country,” he said.The announcement event took place in the Henry J Kaiser Center for the Arts, a historic building in Oakland that has been in disrepair for decades but is on the path to being reopened. Speaking at the event, rightwing author Angela Stanton-King said the venue had been opened to the campaign despite being partially under construction, and was chosen due to the historical events it had hosted – including a speech by Martin Luther King Jr in 1962.The event featured an introduction from the local Muwekma Ohlone tribe, whose battle for federal recognition has been supported by Kennedy, and musical renditions of This Land Is Your Land and America the Beautiful. Speakers included the Stanford professor and Covid-lockdown skeptic Jay Battacharya as well as Kelly Ryerson, a public health advocate who focuses on chronic illnesses she says are caused by toxins in our food supplies.More than two hours into the lengthy announcement event, after most cable news channels had cut away from the stream, the ex-NBA player Metta Sandiford-Artest, formerly known as Metta World Peace, welcomed Shanahan to the stage. The vice-presidential hopeful explained her political mission, citing her strong anti-war beliefs as aligning with Kennedy’s. She soon launched into an anti-pharmaceuticals screed, attributing her passion for “children’s health” to her child’s experience with autism.Democrats are especially concerned that Kennedy could pull votes away from Biden, spoiling the election. Recent polling from Quinnipiac projected Kennedy could receive as much as 15% of the vote in a race involving Biden and Trump, amid limited enthusiasm for the candidates from the two major parties.One such defector was Marilyn Chin, a volunteer for Kennedy’s campaign recruiting voters outside the event. Chin, who is 71, said she voted Democratic for most of her life but was now supporting Kennedy.“Get out of the duopoly,” she said. “Don’t vote Republican, don’t vote Democrat, start looking for something else.”Kennedy will face an expensive, and uphill battle to get on the ballot in all 50 states, which will involve gathering hundreds of thousands of signatures. He has made it on to the ballot in only one state so far, Utah. Still, the Democratic National Committee has called Kennedy a “stalking horse” and said third-party candidates may have tipped the 2016 election to Trump.In a statement following Kennedy’s announcement, a spokesperson for Trump’s campaign called him a “radical leftist” and an “environmental whack job” before stating his campaign would not get very far. The Democratic National Committee called Kennedy’s run a “spoiler campaign” and said it was dangerous for Republican donors to be propping up Kennedy during such a high-stakes election.Earlier this year, the DNC filed a federal election complaint accusing Kennedy and a political action committee backing his third-party bid of illegally colluding to qualify for the ballot in swing states crucial to Biden’s re-election. Kennedy’s campaign has denied breaching financial barriers between candidates and outside groups, which is prohibited by federal campaign law.The Democrats have also said that a major donor to American Values 2024, the Super Pac backing Kennedy, is Tim Mellon, a businessman who has also backed Trump.Shanahan told the New York Times she has contributed $4m to American Values 2024.The Bay Area entrepreneur is known in tech circles as the founder of ClearAccessIP, a startup that uses software to help companies manage and distribute patents and patent rights. But she gained notoriety after her 2018 marriage to Google co-founder Sergey Brin, one of the wealthiest people in the world. The couple’s divorce in 2022 drew extra scrutiny following a Wall Street Journal report that Shanahan had conducted an affair with the Tesla and X chief, Elon Musk. She has denied the allegations.In February, she helped finance a $5m campaign advertisement for Kennedy during the Super Bowl, which alluded to his uncle John F Kennedy’s successful 1960 White House run. The ad was denounced by Kennedy’s family, who have disavowed his campaign and his baseless theories on vaccines and the Covid pandemic, among other issues.Shanahan told the New York Times that she was not an anti-vaxxer, but has shared Kennedy’s discredited claims about the safety of vaccinations. At Tuesday’s event, she formally renounced any affiliation with the Democratic party, saying it had “lost its way”.“The Democratic party is supposed to be the party of compassion and peace, it is supposed to be the party of diplomacy and science,” she said. “While I know those ideals still abide within many Democrats, I want to point out that the party has lost its way. In its leadership, in its institutions, it has become interested in elitism, celebrity and winning at all costs, even if that means turning a blind eye on issues they all know to be true.”Kennedy’s anti-vaccination views drew protesters at Tuesday’s announcement, including Wendy Bloom, a registered nurse who has worked in pediatric cancer units for 37 years, who stood outside the Oakland convention center with pro-Biden and pro-vaccine signs.“Besides being anti-vaccines, he’s not pro-science, and anti-research,” she said. She also dismissed the choice of Shanahan as a running mate.“His choice of VP tells us everything we need to know,” Bloom said. “She has no experience. She’s just a wealthy individual who can help raise money. Voters deserve someone with experience.” More

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      Aaron Rodgers denies he believes Sandy Hook murders were an inside job

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      Aaron Rodgers has denied he believes the murder of 20 children in the Sandy Hook school shooting was an inside job by the US government.The New York Jets quarterback has been under increased scrutiny this week after the New York Times reported he is a potential running mate for Robert F Kennedy Jr’s independent presidential campaign.On Wednesday night, CNN ran a report in which one of its journalists said Rodgers told her in 2013 that he believed the Sandy Hook tragedy was staged. CNN quotes another person who said that Rodgers said the 2012 shooting “never happened … All those children never existed. They were all actors.” The person alleges the quarterback said the parents of the murdered children were “all making it up. They’re all actors.”Conspiracy theories around the shooting have circulated for years and have been disproven. Parents of the victims have suffered harassment by people who do not believe the murders took place.On Thursday, Rodgers issued a statement outlining his beliefs on the shooting.“As I’m on the record saying in the past, what happened in Sandy Hook was an absolute tragedy,” he wrote on X. “I am not and have never been of the opinion that the events did not take place. Again, I hope that we learn from this and other tragedies to identify the signs that will allow us to prevent unnecessary loss of life. My thoughts and prayers continue to remain with the families affected along with the entire Sandy Hook community.”Rodgers is known for promoting widely disproved fringe theories around subjects such as Covid-19, immigration, vaccines, the September 11 attacks and masking.The 40-year-old has spoken of his admiration for Kennedy, and last week called him “presidential”. Kennedy says he will announce his running mate on 26 March. In a podcast last month, Rodgers said he does not support Joe Biden or Donald Trump for president.“Trump got four years. I don’t know how much this swamp got drained,” he said on Look Into It With Eddie Bravo. “It seemed like there are certain members of the establishment who stayed in power or got to power. Biden. I mean, he’s a puppet. I don’t know who’s actually running the country, whether it’s somebody else, but he can barely put his sentences together.”Rodgers has yet to comment on whether he would be interested in being Kennedy’s vice-presidential candidate. He is guaranteed $38m in salary next season from the Jets, who would presumably object to him campaigning during the NFL season, which starts in September. In his prime, Rodgers was one of the most talented players in the NFL but he tore an achilles tendon in his Jets debut last year and missed the rest of the season. More

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      Robert F Kennedy Jr apologizes for Super Bowl ad that referenced JFK

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      Robert F Kennedy Jr apologized for a presidential campaign commercial during Sunday’s Super Bowl that alluded to his uncle John F Kennedy’s successful 1960 White House run.“I’m so sorry if the Super Bowl advertisement caused anyone in my family pain,” Kennedy wrote on social media late on Sunday. He said the ad was created by American Values 2024, a pro-Kennedy political action committee (Pac), “without any involvement or approval” from his presidential campaign.Nonetheless, the commercial remained pinned to the top of his X page, directly above his apology.The commercial – which cost $7m – was criticized by many observers. It featured the same lyrics of “Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy for me” that JFK’s campaign used in a commercial ahead of his victory over Richard Nixon.A speechwriter for another of Kennedy’s late uncles – the former US senator Ted Kennedy – said the ad constituted intellectual theft.“This RFK Jr Super ad is a straight out plagiarism,” Bob Shrum wrote in part. “What a fraud.”Kennedy’s cousin, Bobby Shriver, posted that his mother – JFK’s sister Eunice Kennedy Shriver – would be “appalled” that the commercial used images of her and her brother. While Robert F Kennedy Jr is a vaccination skeptic and conspiracy theorist, Shriver said of his mother that “respect for science, vaccines … [was] in her DNA”.Shriver’s brother, Mark, added in a separate post: “I agree with my brother … simple as that.”Sunday’s ad, which also described its subject as “a man who’s old enough to know and young enough to do”, aired two days after the Democratic National Committee filed a Federal Election Commission complaint accusing the American Values fund of colluding with Kennedy’s campaign.The DNC alleged Kennedy’s campaign had accepted up to $15m worth of in-kind contributions from American Values, and that the Pac coordinated activities with the Kennedy campaign “in a way that violates federal campaign finance laws”.Kennedy’s campaign has denied wrongdoing.A DNC adviser on Friday reiterated accusations that Kennedy’s campaign was being propped up by supporters of Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, who is seeking a second presidency.American Values has received $15m from Tim Mellon, who is also a Trump donor.Kennedy, 70, is the son of the former US attorney general Robert F Kennedy, who was assassinated while running for president in 1968, five years after the assassination of his brother and fellow Democrat JFK.Kennedy’s status as an independent means he is not guaranteed a spot on any state ballot, and as of Sunday was still fighting to be included by at least 10 states. More

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      Democratic party accuses RFK Jr campaign of colluding with Super Pac

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      The Democrats’ national controlling committee complained on Friday that Robert F Kennedy Jr’s third-party presidential campaign and a fund supporting him are colluding against campaign rules to get the dynastic political candidate on election ballots.Kennedy and his Team Kennedy campaign are accused by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) of accepting $10m to $15m in in-kind contributions from American Values 2024, a political action committee – or Pac – that supports Kennedy.The DNC complaint alleges that the Super Pac is coordinating “its activity with Mr Kennedy and his campaign in a way that violates federal campaign finance laws”.Kennedy, who in November was polling higher, at 52%, in terms of voter favorability than Biden or Trump, is attempting to get on the ballot in at least 10 states.The pro-Kennedy American Values 2024 Pac is supported by Tim Mellon, a Donald Trump campaign donor who has pumped $15m into its coffers. Co-founder Tony Lyons told CBS News that the Democrats’ complaint “is just another desperate DNC tactic to defame Kennedy, vilify him and drain his campaign funds”.But in a press briefing on Friday, DNC legal counsel Robert Lenhard said that “rather than doing the hard work itself using money raised in compliance with the candidate contribution limits, the campaign is taking shortcuts”.Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, Kennedy’s campaign manager and daughter-in-law, told the outlet that the Democrats’ complaint “is a non-issue being raised by a partisan political entity that seems to be increasingly concerned with its own candidate and viability”.Fox Kennedy said the campaign had not received any signatures from the American Values Pac or any other Pac. The campaign had also avoided providing any information “that is not available to every volunteer and media outlet on our public website”, she added.The complaint was filed on the same day that Democrats began furious counterattacks on the justice department special counsel Robert Hur over parts of a report into highly sensitive government documents found in Joe Biden’s garage. The report described the president as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory”.DNC officials were asked whether they were concerned Kennedy, 70, might win the support of swing-state voters as Biden’s age (81) and mental acuity become significant re-election issues.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump, 77, has had a similar amount of public gaffes confusing the names of prominent political figures – and he has more than 90 criminal charges pending against him, including for trying to subvert the results of the 2020 election that he lost to Biden. But a notable NBC News poll published on Sunday found Trump holds the edge with voters on the issue of having the necessary mental and physical health to be president.DNC adviser Ramsey Reid said the party is “concerned that Donald Trump and his mega-donors are propping up RFK Jr”.Kennedy is the son of Robert F Kennedy, the former attorney general and US senator who was assassinated in 1968 as he ran for the Democratic presidential nomination. More