Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Saturday he is under investigation over a decades-old incident in which he decapitated a dead whale and took its skull across state lines.
Kennedy acknowledged this during a campaign event for former President Trump, saying he received the letter last week.
The report comes just weeks after left-wing environmental groups revisited the whale issue and called for an investigation.
““I received a letter from the National Marine Fisheries Institute saying I was being investigated for taking a whale specimen 20 years ago,” Kennedy said Saturday.
“This is all weaponisation by the government against political opponents,” he added.
Kennedy never revealed details about the incident, but it first came to light in a 2012 interview with Kennedy's daughter, Kick Kennedy. Town and Country Magazine.
In an interview, Kik recounted how his father cut off the head of a dead whale, tied it to the roof of his car and drove it from the Massachusetts coast to Mount Kisco, New York.
The left-leaning Center for Biodiversity Action Fund had argued that the dead animals were protected by the Marine Mammal Protection and Endangered Species Act and that it was illegal to possess any parts of them.
Additionally, they argued, this was likely a felony violation of the Lacey Act of 1900, which “prohibits the transportation of any wild animal, live or dead, possessed in violation of any state, federal, or international regulation or law.”
“Every time we accelerated on the highway, whale fluid would pour out onto the car window. It was the most disgusting thing on earth,” Kick told the magazine, adding that the incident happened around 1994.
“We all had plastic bags over our heads with holes in them and people on the highway were giving us the middle finger and it was a normal thing for us,” she added.
The Center for Biological Diversity revisited the story just days after Kennedy dropped out of the 2024 presidential race and endorsed Trump.
The whale incident isn't Kennedy's only recent controversy over dead animals: the president also admitted to dumping a bear carcass in New York City's Central Park more than a decade ago.
