Health Dept spokespeople meet secretly in plot to distance selves from RFK Jr: report

Since taking over the Department of Health and Human Services, conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been quietly reshaping the department's press team to boost his own personal image — to the point where staffers are scrambling to try to get their own names taken off the press releases they're being forced to issue, political reporter Tara Palmeri wrote on Monday.

This follows reporting on Kennedy's tenure being marked with massive layoffs of public health experts in critical roles, which ultimately forced a number of them to be rehired back as Kennedy claimed the layoffs were never meant to be permanent — a situation unfolding in a number of departments of the federal government as tech billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) task force makes rapid cuts to personnel.

However, Palmeri wrote, what Kennedy "wanted most of all was to control the flow of information" in the restructuring — and since he has taken charge, "the agency has been focused on promoting Kennedy's brand, claiming credit for initiatives that started before him and spreading disinformation."

Things have gotten so bad, she reported, that "press officers at [HHS] met in secret to discuss how they can make sure their names weren't associated with the misinformation they were instructed to send to the press by Kennedy's lieutenants."

Kennedy has been infamous for promoting conspiracy theories attacking consensus medical science, most famously his belief that vaccines are poisoning children.

Under Kennedy, HHS is set to fill a critical data analysis position with David Geier, a notorious vaccine-autism conspiracy theorist who was sanctioned by Maryland health authorities for practicing medicine without a license and unethically experimenting on autistic children.