Former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr says he is being investigated for collecting a “whale specimen” two decades ago.
“Right after I endorsed President Trump, I received a letter from the ‘National Marine Fisheries Institute’ saying that they were investigating me for collecting a whale specimen 20 years ago,” Kennedy said while campaigning for Trump in Arizona on Saturday, according to a clip obtained by NBC News.
“This is all about the weaponization of our government against political opponents of the party in power,” he added.
Kennedy did not go into much details about the story, but in a profile for Town & Country magazine in 2012, Kennedy’s daughter, Kick Kennedy, recalled how her father once decapitated a dead whale with a chainsaw and brought the head home.
“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,” Kick told the magazine. “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.”
The Center for Biological Diversity Action Fund, an environmental advocacy group, called on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to open an investigation when the story resurfaced this summer.
The group noted in the letter that it is “illegal to possess any part of an animal, dead or alive,” under the Marine Mammal Protection Act and Endangered Species Act.
“There are good reasons why it is illegal for any person to collect or keep parts of any endangered species,” the group said.
“Most importantly, vital research opportunities are lost when individuals scavenge a wildlife carcass and interfere with the work of scientists,” they continued. “This is particularly true of marine mammals, which are some of the most difficult wildlife species in the world to study.”
