Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the 26th United States Secretary of Health and Human Services, having assumed office on February 13, 2025. An environmental lawyer, author, and activist from the Kennedy family, he ran for president before being appointed to lead the federal health department.

Kennedy has publicly acknowledged flying on Jeffrey Epstein’s plane on two occasions. In his own account, he stated, “I was on Jeffrey Epstein’s jet two times.” He has described the first flight as a 1993 Easter trip to Palm Beach, Florida, with his wife and two children, after his wife had “some kind of relationship with Ghislaine Maxwell” and Maxwell and Epstein “offered us a ride.” He described the second flight, roughly one to two years later, as a family fossil-hunting trip with his wife and four children to Rapid City, South Dakota. Kennedy said he “was never on his jet alone” and that the flights occurred “before anybody knew about Jeffrey Epstein’s nefarious” activities.

According to reporting on the released files, Kennedy admitted during his presidential campaign that he flew on Epstein’s plane, and emails and audio transcripts within the files indicate that he had joined Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell on two vacation trips around 2012–2013. There is no reported evidence that Kennedy was involved in or aware of Epstein’s crimes.

Is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in the Epstein files?

Yes. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is named in connection with the Jeffrey Epstein files, and he has personally acknowledged flying on Epstein’s plane twice in the 1990s with his family. Being named in the files is not evidence of any crime or wrongdoing. People appear in these documents in many contexts — correspondence, flight logs, contact books, scheduling, photographs, or passing references. See the sources below for the specific documented context, and the note at the bottom of this page.

Documents

Primary-source records that reference Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Inclusion in these documents is not, by itself, evidence of wrongdoing; Kennedy says the flights occurred in the 1990s before Epstein’s crimes were known and that he was never on the jet alone, and he is not accused of any wrongdoing.

• Epstein flight logs — Pilot manifests for Epstein’s aircraft record Kennedy as a passenger, consistent with the two family flights he has publicly acknowledged. NBC News reports Kennedy appears in the files “both in Epstein’s flight logs and in an email exchange.”
• DOJ Epstein Files (EFTA release portal) — Among the records the Department of Justice released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act is a 2012 email in which Ghislaine Maxwell asked Epstein, “didn’t we go fossil hunting with him and Bobby Kennedy in NDakota?” — corresponding to the South Dakota fossil-hunting trip Kennedy has described.