Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is in trouble with environmental groups, again, thanks to Ben Affleck’s divorce surfacing a ten-year-old story about a chainsaw and a whale carcass.
The story, which appeared in a 2012 Town & Country profile of Kennedy’s daughter Kick, described an incident from Kick’s childhood. When she was six, a dead whale washed up on Squaw Island in Hyannis, Massachusetts. “Bobby—who likes to study animal skulls and skeletons—ran down to the beach with a chainsaw, cut off the whale’s head, and then bungee-corded it to the roof of the family minivan for the five-hour haul back to Mount Kisco, New York,” according to the report.
“‘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. “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.”
The profile called Kennedy an “eccentric environmentalist” but at least one group thinks it might be criminal. According to The Daily Beast, the Center for Biological Diversity Fund, a nonprofit that focuses on environmental issues, wrote a letter to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration asking it to investigate Kennedy for grabbing the whale skull.
“Under both the Marine Mammal Protection Act and Endangered Species Act, it is illegal to possess any part of an animal, dead or alive, that is protected under either statute,” the letter said, according to the Daily Beast. “Continued possession of any whale skull represents a significant and ongoing violation of the law.”
The group had previously denounced Kennedy in an August 19 open letter on its website.
“[Kennedy] is not an environmentalist,” the letter said. “He is a dangerous conspiracy theorist and science denier whose agenda would be a disaster for our communities and the planet.”
Kennedy can thank Ben Affleck and his ongoing divorce for revealing yet another embarrassing animal corpse story. Jennifer Lopez filed for divorce from the actor on August 20 and the press reported he’d been spotted with Kennedy’s daughter Kick. People poured over old Kick news and found the Town & Country profile with the whale story.
RFK Jr. ended his presidential bid just before the whale story surfaced and added the weight of another dead animal to his already ailing campaign. He endorsed Trump during his concession speech.
On Sunday, as the whale story resurfaced, Kennedy responded to a video on X that purportedly showed a pilot dumping chemicals into the air from a plane. “We are going to stop this crime,” the failed presidential candidate said. Kennedy had previously gotten in trouble after journalists discovered he’d dumped a bear carcass in Central Park and staged it to look like it had been hit by a bike as part of a bizarre prank.
