Robert F. Kennedy Jr. defends using campaign donations to pay family members

Independent presidential candidate Robert. F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign is defending the use of donor funds to pay Kennedy family members’ salaries, according to a Raw Story review of federal election records.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s daughter-in-law, Amaryllis Kennedy, and the nephew of his wife, Jackson Hines, have appeared on the campaign’s payroll in recent months.

“Though Amaryllis and Jackson are family members of the candidate by marriage, their role is based on the functional business needs of the campaign and the work that they perform in the capacity of their role,” Team Kennedy Chief Operating Officer Matthew Sanders wrote to the Federal Election Commission on Jan. 19. “As shown above, Amaryllis and Jackson provided bona fide services to the campaign and the campaign's payments for their services were not in excess of fair market value.”

In a Jan. 9 letter to Team Kennedy, and first noted by CNBC, the FEC had questioned the campaign’s potential “personal use of the committee's campaign funds.”

Sanders explained that Amaryllis Kennedy — who he said previously worked as a head of product at Twitter and “built and sold a technology company” — switched from a Kennedy campaign volunteer to its chief of digital operations in May 2023.

She was then promoted in August 2023 to senior policy and strategic adviser as she “quickly began filling in political strategy gaps with her research and analysis of election data along with her policy research,” Sanders said.

The campaign paid Amaryllis Kennedy about $70,000 between June and October 2023, according to federal records.

Between July 14 to Sept. 22 alone, Amaryllis Kennedy earned about $49,000, according to a Raw Story analysis of the Kennedy campaign’s most recent campaign finance disclosure.

“The Campaign Manager indicated Amaryllis Kennedy had been acting in this role during the June and July timeframe and so was entitled to back pay that came with the promotion. The pay was in line with industry benchmarks and other committee campaign filings,” Sanders wrote to Shannon Ringgold, a senior campaign finance analyst for the FEC.

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The Jan. 19 letter from Team Kennedy to the FEC also noted that the Kennedy campaign hired Hines to serve as a travel aide and bodyguard. Hines began work on Sept. 25, 2023, after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “tried two other resources over the previous four months that had not suited his needs.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is married to TV director and actor Cheryl Hines.

The Team Kennedy campaign did not respond to Raw Story’s request for comment.

In response to questions from Raw Story, Judith Ingram, an FEC spokesperson, referred to a 2001 FEC letter to then-Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-IL) about using campaign funds to pay his wife as a consultant. The FEC advised that salary payments to family members are permissible so long as they’re for "bona fide, campaign related services.”

Family members in such instances are to be paid “no more than the fair market value,” according to both the 2001 letter and the FEC’s published guidance to candidates for the 2023-2024 election cycle.

“If a family member provides bona fide services to the campaign, any salary payment in excess of the fair market value of the services provided is personal use,” according to the Code of Federal Regulations.

“We cannot comment on specific candidates or committees,” Ingram told Raw Story via email.

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Kennedy, an environmental lawyer who has repeatedly spread misinformation about Covid-19 vaccines, is running for president as an independent after initially registering as a Democratic opponent to President Joe Biden.

One in five voters surveyed by Monmouth University said they would consider voting for Kennedy in the general election, according to a December 2023 report.

Kennedy is the son of the late-Attorney General and Sen. Bobby Kennedy and nephew of the late-President John F. Kennedy and late-Sen. Ted Kennedy.