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The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) opened an investigation into former Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for allegedly decapitating a dead whale 20 years ago, Fox News Digital confirmed.
The controversy arose in August after Kennedy's daughter, Kick Kennedy, shared in a resurfaced 2012 Town and Country interview that her father once beheaded a washed up whale with a chainsaw. According to an interview with the outlet, he reportedly attached the whale's head to his car and drove it to New York.
However, Kick Kennedy described the event as just an average day for her family.
"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," she told the outlet. "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."
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When asked about the incident, the agency told Fox News Digital on Tuesday that it is "long-standing NOAA practice not to comment on open investigations."
Kennedy made the initial assertion that he was under federal investigation for the decades-old incident during a campaign event for former President Donald Trump on Saturday.
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The former presidential candidate-turned-Trump ally told rally goers that the investigation was a "weaponization of our government against political opponents."
The Center for Biological Diversity Action Fund called on the NOAA to investigate the events described by Kennedy's daughter just days after he suspended his presidential bid to join forces with Trump in August.
The group, which endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president in 2024, claimed that Kennedy violated the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act, as whales remain protected under those laws.
