NOAA confirms investigation into RFK Jr. over dead whale carcass

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration confirmed on Monday it is investigating Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for allegedly decapitating a dead whale carcass and transporting it home two decades ago.

On Saturday, Kennedy said at a campaign event in Arizona he received a letter from the National Marine Fisheries Services, an organization that falls underneath NOAA, informing him he was under investigation for an incident he said occurred 20 years ago in which he collected a dead whale specimen.

A spokesperson for NOAA confirmed to CNN on Monday that Kennedy is under investigation for the incident.

“It is long standing NOAA practice not to comment on open investigations,” the spokesperson said.

The story resurfaced shortly after he suspended his presidential campaign last month after a 2012 interview with Kennedy’s daughter Kathleen “Kick” Kennedy published in Town & Country Magazine was recirculated on social media. In the interview, Kennedy’s daughter recalls her father using a chainsaw to cut off the head of a dead whale carcass on the beach near their Cape Cod family home and driving the whale’s head back to New York.

Following the story gaining attention on social media, the Center for Biological Diversity Action Fund called for NOAA to investigate Kennedy over the incident, arguing his actions could have jeopardized scientific research.

Kennedy said Saturday he wrote a letter to NOAA in response to being informed he is under investigation, accusing the group of killing marine wildlife with “giant offshore wind farms off the East Coast.”