A woman who publicly accused Robert F Kennedy Jr of sexual assault when she worked for him as a babysitter said she was motivated to do so when he released a campaign ad based on a famous advertisement for his uncle, President John F Kennedy.
“I literally was just watching the Super Bowl and saw the ad and thought, ‘You’ve gotta be kidding me,’” Eliza Cooney told USA Today.
Released when Kennedy was running for president as an independent, the ad attracted criticism from members of the famous Democratic political family. Kennedy Jr apologized – but kept the ad online.
Nine months later, after dropping out of the presidential race and backing Donald Trump, Kennedy is Trump’s nominee for US health secretary.
A hugely controversial choice given his promotion of vaccine conspiracy theories and other disputed health claims, Kennedy is also one of a number of Trump cabinet picks to be accused of sexual misconduct.
Cooney initially told Vanity Fair about how she went to work for Kennedy in 1998, when she was 23 and he was a 45-year-old environmental attorney. Describing a series of unwanted advances, she said Kennedy ultimately “came up behind her … and began groping her, putting his hands on her hips and sliding them up along her rib cage and breasts”, before being interrupted by someone walking into the room.
When Kennedy was asked about Cooney’s allegations, he told the BreakingPoints podcast he was “not a church boy … I have so many skeletons in my closet”, but refused to comment further.
In the USA Today interview published on Wednesday, Cooney said: “I know that there are hard-working people who don’t have skeletons in their closet. And I wish we were electing people with fewer skeletons in their closet.”
In July, it was widely reported that Kennedy sent a text to Cooney after the Vanity Fair story was published.
He wrote: “I read your description of an episode in which I touched you in an unwanted manner. I have no memory of this incident but I apologize sincerely for anything I ever did that made you feel uncomfortable or anything I did or said that offended you or hurt your feelings. I never intended you any harm. If I hurt you, it was inadvertent. I feel badly for doing so.”
Cooney told USA Today: “I don’t know if it’s an apology if you say, ‘I don’t remember.’ In the context of all his public appearances, it seemed a little bit – it didn’t match. It was like a throwaway.”
USA Today said it had contacted a lawyer for a Kennedy non-profit and Trump’s transition team for comment.
Perhaps busy dealing with allegations of sexual misconduct against Pete Hegseth, the nominee for defense secretary, and Matt Gaetz, then the nominee for attorney general, the Trump transition did not immediately respond. The next day, Gaetz withdrew from consideration for a cabinet post.
Cooney said she was not speaking out about Kennedy “to try to stall his nomination or upend the confirmation”, but was “just doing it for the public record”, having first told people of the alleged assault in 2023 during the #MeToo movement, which began in 2017 and when many women named their sexual abusers.
Saying that for a long time she “brushed this off a little bit”, seeing sexual assault as “just the price of doing business”, Cooney added: “It’s remarkable that it’s as prevalent as it is. And I just wonder – have we made any progress? This is like a rewind.”
• This article was amended on 22 November 2024 to clarify that Eliza Cooney first told people in 2023, not in 2017, of the alleged assault against her by Robert F Kennedy Jr.
