Robert F. Kennedy Jr. defended Amaryllis Fox Kennedy’s involvement in his campaign following the announcement that the Federal Election Commission (FEC) asked the Kennedy campaign to clarify salary payments made to a family member.
The correspondence indicates that the Kennedy campaign must provide the FEC information regarding “payments to members of the candidate’s family that possibly constitute personal use of the committee’s campaign funds.”
The FEC threatened legal action against the campaign if the payments did not meet fair market value guidelines for legitimate campaign services.
According to financial disclosures, the Kennedy campaign reported paying Mrs. Kennedy around $70,000 for administrative services.
The FEC set a Feb. 13 deadline for the campaign to provide details on the payments.
“Salary payments made to members of the candidate’s family constitute personal use of campaign funds unless the family member is providing bona fide services to the campaign,” the FEC letter read.
“If a family member is providing bona fide services to the campaign, any salary payment in excess of the fair market value of the services provided is personal use. Adequate responses must be received by the commission on or before the due date noted above to be taken into consideration in determining whether audit action will be initiated. Failure to comply with the provisions of the act may also result in an enforcement action against the committee.”
Mrs. Kennedy was not named in the FEC letter, but she was the only family member on the campaign payroll between July and September, according to CNBC.
A former undercover CIA agent who is married to Mr. Kennedy’s son, Robert F. Kennedy III, Mrs. Kennedy joined the Kennedy campaign as digital director in May 2023, according to a statement from the campaign.
Mrs. Kennedy is the former founder and CEO of Mulu, a natural language processing startup. She was also Head of Product for what was then Twitter’s consumer commerce division and was hired as digital director for “her decade of experience building breakthrough consumer digital technologies and online communities,” the statement read.
Last October, Mrs. Kennedy was named campaign manager, replacing former Democrat Congressman and presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, who stepped down days after Mr. Kennedy announced that he would run for president as an independent.
“I asked Amaryllis to run my presidential campaign for the same reason my uncle, John F. Kennedy, asked his brother, Robert F. Kennedy, to run his campaign,” Mr. Kennedy said in the statement. “There is nobody who could possibly be more effective in this position than Amaryllis Kennedy.”
Mr. Kennedy is attempting to get on the presidential general election ballot in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, and Mrs. Kennedy’s background contributes to that objective, the Kennedy campaign said.
“Given RFK Jr.’s commitment to reaching millions of forgotten voters inaccessible via mainstream media, the campaign has relied on Amaryllis’ digital strategy to share its message of hope and renewed prosperity for all Americans. Her team’s innovative suite of mobile and desktop tools are critical in harnessing the campaign’s grassroots groundswell and fueling RFK Jr.’s complex volunteer efforts to achieve ballot access in all 50 states,” according to the statement.
Mr. Kennedy is an outspoken critic of the FBI, CIA, and other government agencies. He has chastised the Biden administration for not providing him Secret Service protection. His campaign suggested that could be why the FEC sent the letter.
“RFK Jr. has broadly complained against the weaponization of federal agencies, including the Secret Service, against his campaign. It’s curious that the FEC has capacity to investigate this non-issue when legitimate complaints against top-level Democrats and Republicans have sat dormant for years,” the statement explained.
“It’s fair for the FEC to look for nepotism when a campaign gives a no-show job to a family member. In this case, a simple Google search would have confirmed that Amaryllis is the campaign manager and is actively running the campaign.”
