Former US presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr has said he is being investigated for cutting off the head of a dead whale with a chainsaw.
Speaking during a campaign event for Donald Trump in Glendale, Arizona, RFK Jr said: “I received a letter from the National Marine Fisheries Institute saying that they were investigating me for collecting a whale specimen 20 years ago.”
The 70-year-old did not go into detail about the decapitation of the whale, but his daughter previously described how he had used a chainsaw to cut the head off a dead whale 30 years ago.
Kathleen “Kick” Kennedy, 36, described how when she was six her father had taken the head of the whale after it washed ashore in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, and lashed it to the family’s car with bungee cords to drive it to their home in New York.
“Every time we accelerated on the highway, whale juice would pour into the windows of the car, and it was the rankest thing on the planet,” she told Town & Country magazine in 2012.
“We all had plastic bags over our heads with mouth holes cut out, and people on the highway were giving us the finger, but that was just normal day-to-day stuff for us.”
RFK Jr said he had responded to the letter from the National Marine Fisheries Institute and added: “This is all about the weaponisation of our government against political opponents.”
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He told NBC News he has never killed a whale.
After the story about him beheading a whale resurfaced last month, an environmental group called on federal officials to investigate.
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“Kennedy may think that his name and privilege mean the rules don’t apply to him, but if he had a shred of integrity left he’d surrender this whale skull and any other illegally collected wildlife parts to the authorities,” said Brett Hartl, political director for the Center for Biological Diversity Action Fund (CBDAF).
“If he doesn’t, NOAA law enforcement should open an investigation and potentially bring charges against him.”
The CBDAF said that under the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act it is illegal to possess any part of an animal, dead or alive, protected under either law, and transporting the whale skull from Massachusetts to New York, across state lines, represented a potential felony violation of the Lacey Act.
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Dead bear prank
Last month RFK Jr announced he was suspending his independent campaign for the presidency to lend his support to Mr Trump.
It comes after he was criticised for abandoning the dead body of a young bear in New York City’s Central Park.
He said he initially intended to skin the bear but decided to try to make it look like the cub had got hit by a bike in the park, adding: “We thought it would be amusing for whoever found it or something.”
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At the time, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation said it was against the law to dispose of a dead bear the way RFK Jr said he did. He could have faced a fine but the statute of limitations for such offences was a year, it added.
RFK Jr’s father, Robert F Kennedy, was assassinated as he ran for president in 1968. His uncle, former Democratic US president John F Kennedy, was shot dead in 1963.
