Living in the shadows of “The Kennedy Curse,” Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.—known as RFK Jr. or “Bobby,” like his father—carries the burden of worry and fear that his presidential campaign—and life—could be cut short by an assassin’s bullet.
While some may still doubt whether his security concerns are real, two recent incidents could tell a different story and shed some light on Mr. Kennedy’s peculiar predicament.
The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) told The Epoch Times officers responded to a burglary that morning to find a Jonathan Macht, 28, described as a white male wearing a green T-shirt. He was taken into custody, cited for trespassing, and released.
But, the suspect then returned to the Kennedy home and was arrested a second time for violating a protective order, and was held on $30,000 bail, police said.
And, new details have emerged about an armed man allegedly posing as a U.S. marshal who was arrested at an RFK Jr. campaign event in Los Angeles last month.
Adrian Paul Aispuro, 44, of Northridge, a neighborhood in Los Angeles County, was arrested on Sept. 15 outside the Wilshire Ebell Theatre, where Mr. Kennedy was to speak at a Hispanic Heritage Month event.
Mr. Aispuro was apprehended just after the event started and was carrying a loaded pistol in a shoulder holster as he attempted to enter the theater through a side door that wasn’t equipped with a metal detector.
However, security officers suspected Mr. Aispuro wasn’t a U.S. marshal, even though he was wearing a badge on a lanyard around his neck and carried other federal identification; he was questioned and held until police arrived. Another loaded handgun was found in his backpack.
Mr. Leake questions why the Biden administration has so far denied Secret Service protection to Mr. Kennedy, the son of Sen. Bobby Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1968 during his presidential campaign, and the nephew of President John F. Kennedy, who was shot and killed in 1963 in Dallas.
The theater is less than two miles from the site of the now-demolished Ambassador Hotel, where Mr. Kennedy’s father was fatally shot by Sirhan Sirhan at a presidential campaign event on June 5, 1968.
“Most Americans at the time found it unfathomably strange that yet another Kennedy died from an assassin’s bullets,” Mr. Leake wrote.
Mr. Leake, 53, whose father served on the grand jury that indicted Jack Ruby for murdering Lee Harvey Oswald, is also a friend of author Hugh Aynesworth, a leading authority on the JFK assassination who has read and researched the Kennedy murders since he was a boy.
The Case
The LAPD told The Epoch Times via email that Mr. Aispuro was released on bail on Sept. 22 and had an initial court date of Oct. 3 in Hollywood Superior Court. Meanwhile, a psychiatric evaluation scheduled for Oct. 3 was postponed by order of the court, LAPD detective Douglas Beard told The Epoch Times.Mr. Beard served a search warrant for Mr. Aispuro’s home, where investigators found three rifles, including an AR-15, and a shotgun.
- A Maverick Arms 12 Gauge shotgun with an extended magazine tube
- A Mosin-Nagant M91/30 7.62 caliber rifle
- Savage Arms Model 110 .338 caliber rifle
- A custom-built AR-15 with an adjustable cheekrest to enhance accuracy
Mr. Aispuro won’t have access to the weapons, Mr. Beard said, until at least Dec. 13, when his permanent restraining order hearing will occur.
According to the restraining order petition, Mr. Aispuro was released on $35,000 bail, but subsequent court orders indicate bail was reduced to $10,000.
The criminal proceedings in Mr. Aispuro’s case have been suspended until March 19, 2024, pending the results of the psychiatric examination, court documents indicate.
Mr. Leake told The Epoch Times in an interview that he’s curious why the FBI hasn’t pushed harder for a felony charge against Mr. Aispuro for allegedly impersonating a federal officer.
“That’s a serious federal crime. There’s no real ambiguity about that. He was wearing a federal marshal’s badge. He said, ‘I’m with the marshals’ ... and then he reiterated that declaration to the Los Angeles police,” Mr. Leake said. “To me, it’s not plausible to conclude we needn’t be concerned about this.”
The firearms restraining order petition reveals that an LAPD detective at the Wilshire station consulted with the U.S. Marshals and FBI, but was advised by both agencies that there was “insufficient evidence” to arrest Mr. Aispuro for impersonating a federal officer.
The Los Angeles City Attorney’s office didn’t respond to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.
Psychiatric Evaluation Pending
In the July TikTok video posted by Mr. Leake, Mr. Aispuro refers to himself as “God’s gangster” and says, “Calculate my full name in gematria and calculate my last name in gematria and do you’re [expletive] research on that last name and you’ll know who you’re [expletive] with.”According to Encyclopedia Britannica, gematria is “the substitution of numbers for letters of the Hebrew alphabet” to spell out words and phrases.
As Mr. Leake points out, Mr. Aispuro claimed in an interview with an LAPD detective following his arrest that he’s a cousin of Emma Coronel Aispuro—the wife of infamous Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman of the Sinaloa cartel, who is serving a life sentence. Ms. Aispuro was reportedly released from a U.S. prison on Sept. 13, two days before the Kennedy event in Los Angeles.
In the video, Mr. Aispuro then encourages outlaw biker gangs the Hells Angels and Mongols to contact him.
“Let’s [expletive] it up, all right. I’m putting this planet on lockdown,” Mr. Aispuro continues. “DefCon 1, regulators mount up. Stay-at-home orders effective now. That’s what’s happening. Take care of each other, protect the women and the children. If I don’t make it back, call the [expletive] President, your commander-in-chief, Donald J. Trump.”
Mr. Aispuro told an LAPD detective he was “working undercover” as part of QAnon and believed he had been talking with Q via text, “using codes decipherable by a calculator.” An item that appeared to be a calculator was found on Mr. Aispuro’s by police.
Mr. Aispuro told police he believes Mr. Kennedy is also behind the Q operation.
In response to an automated text message from the Kennedy campaign inviting him to the “Meet and Greet Fiesta” with Mr. Kennedy at the theater, Mr. Aispuro wrote: “I’d like to meet him, I’ve been working Under Cover inside Kaiser for 17 years. And I’m taking them down in the New Legal System. I’m coming forward and I have a lot to say,” according to the restraining order petition.
Mr. Aispuro, who has lived with his parents in Northridge since 2017, told police that on Sept. 15 “he woke up, got dressed, and his brother, Raymond Aispuro, drove him to the RFK Jr. event in his Tesla.”
According to police, Raymond Aispuro believed his brother was working for the U.S. marshals and that wearing a shoulder holster with a loaded gun was part of his security job. He said he was unaware there was a Kennedy campaign event at that location.
During the execution of the search warrant, Mr. Beard spoke with Mr. Aispuro’s parents. They indicated that after their son was injured in 2018 and stopped working at Kaiser Permanente the following year, he grew isolated and withdrawn and spends a lot of time on the computer researching QAnon.
“He worked for Kaiser in the emergency room for many years until he suffered multiple work-related injuries which caused him to be placed on light duty until he had to leave Kaiser,” according to the petition.
Mr. Leake says that Mr. Aispuro shouldn’t have been released on bail without a full psychiatric evaluation, noting that Mr. Beard, a seasoned LAPD detective, has explicitly stated his concern that Mr. Aispuro poses a high risk of harming others.
“Based on the totality of my investigation, I believe respondent Adrian Aispuro poses a significant danger in the near future of causing personal injury to others by having access to firearms, magazines, and ammunition,” Mr. Beard stated.
However, he also noted in the petition that Mr. Aispuro doesn’t have any criminal or mental health history that would prevent him from purchasing or possessing firearms and doesn’t meet the criteria for a “5150 hold,” which allows authorities to involuntarily detain any adult experiencing a mental health crisis for a 72-hour psychiatric hospitalization if they are considered at risk of harm to themselves or others.
Secret Service Protection
The Biden administration has repeatedly denied Mr. Kennedy the benefit of U.S. Secret Service protection, according to his campaign. President Joe Biden was granted such protection on March 17, 2020, 231 days before Election Day.“The longstanding practice of providing Secret Service protection for ALL presidential candidates—inaugurated on the day Senator Robert Kennedy was shot in 1968—was President Lyndon Johnson’s most perfectly non-partisan action,” Mr. Leake wrote in the preface to his article. “It is in this spirit that I have investigated this story, which I believe to be of vital significance to our Constitutional Republic.”
Stefanie Spear, Mr. Kennedy’s press secretary, said the campaign declined to comment on the article.
Randy Economy, 63, who was next to the stage when Mr. Kennedy was informed about the arrest, told The Epoch Times that the experience was “eerie” and “surreal.”
“I’m glad I wasn’t a witness to history, and I was able to walk out of there unscathed,” he said. “I’m surprised it wasn’t a massive slaughter.”
Mr. Economy, who has served as a political campaign adviser to about 300 candidates—Democrats as well as Republicans—criticized the Biden administration for denying Secret Service protection for presidential candidates.
“It’s absolutely outrageous, especially with the legacy of the Kennedy family,” he said. “We have to protect our people running for president. We cannot allow this to happen in a civilized democracy.”
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