Environmental Group Demands Probe Into Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Beheading Of A Whale With A Chainsaw

Kick Kennedy, the daughter of independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., stated that her father cut off a whale’s head with a chainsaw.

During a recently resurfaced interview with Town & Country which took place in 2012, Kick told the outlet that when she was six, her father discovered that a dead whale washed up on Squaw Island, a beach located in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts.

Kennedy’s daughter then mentioned that the independent presidential candidate ran down to the beach with a chainsaw, cut off the whale’s head, and then bungee-corded it to the roof of his family’s minivan for their five-hour trip back to Mount Kisco, 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,” Kick recalled during the interview. 

“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,” she added.

On August 26, the Center for Biological Diversity Action Fund, a nonprofit group, wrote a letter to the directors of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in which they asked them to investigate Kennedy for his actions.

In the letter to the NOAA, Brett Hartl, the national political director for the Center for Biological Diversity Action Fund, claimed that Kennedy, a former environmental lawyer, violated the Marine Mammal Protection Act and perhaps even the Endangered Species Act.

Hartl stated that the independent presidential candidate’s “apparent transport of the marine mammal skull from Massachusetts to New York, and therefore across state lines, also represented a felony violation of the Lacey Act, one of the earliest wildlife conservation laws enacted by [the] United States in 1900.”

He also declared, “There are good reasons why it is illegal for any person to collect or keep parts of any endangered species.”

He noted that “most importantly, vital research opportunities are lost when individuals scavenge a wildlife carcass and interfere with the work of scientists” while also pointing out that “this is particularly true of marine mammals, which are some of the most difficult wildlife species in the world to study.”

“We hope that the NOAA Office of Law Enforcement, at a minimum, is able to ensure that Mr. Kennedy surrenders any and all illegally obtained wildlife that he continues to possess, including the whale skull he took from the Massachusetts beach in 1994,” Hartl wrote.

“Given Mr. Kennedy’s reckless disregard for the two most important marine conservation laws in the United States, we ask that NOAA consider all appropriate civil and criminal penalties as well,” the national political director added.

On Wednesday, a NOAA spokeswoman mentioned that the agency received the letter “and will respond through the appropriate channels.”

In July, Kennedy denied a report from Vanity Fair which said he ate what appeared to be a dog’s carcass.

Journalist Joe Hagan published an article showing a photograph of the independent candidate, which had been taken in 2010, posing with and pretending to take a bite of an animal’s barbecued carcass. 

After the story was published, Kennedy stated on social media that the image showed a goat’s carcass in Patagonia, contrary to what he texted his friend. 

On August 4, Kennedy admitted to actress Roseanne Barr in a video posted on X that, in 2014, he dumped the dead body of a bear cub in Central Park.

Last week, Kennedy withdrew from the presidential race after polls showed support for him plummeting.