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Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose bid for president as an independent candidate has brought to light disturbing allegations from his past, tried to apologize last week to a woman who accused him of sexual assault, insisting that he had no memory of the alleged encounter.
The woman, Eliza Cooney, told Vanity Fair earlier this month that Kennedy had groped her or behaved inappropriately with her on several occasions when she worked as a babysitter for his children in 1998. (MSNBC has not independently verified the allegations, and Kennedy did not respond to NBC News’ request for comment.)
Kennedy, who was in his 40s at the time of the alleged incidents, declined to respond specifically to the accusations in an interview with the podcast “Breaking Points” on the day the accusations were revealed, but said that he had a “rambunctious youth.”
“I’m not going to comment on the details of any of them,” he said when asked about Cooney’s allegations, “but it’s — you know, I am who I am.”
However, NBC News reported that Kennedy reached out to Cooney two days after the Vanity Fair article was published, and when Cooney didn’t respond, he texted her: “I have no memory of this incident, but I apologize sincerely for anything I ever did that made you feel uncomfortable.” His campaign did not respond to NBC News’ request for comment.
Kennedy also texted Cooney that he wanted to apologize to her in person, according to The Washington Post, which was the first to report on the text messages. Cooney told the Post that Kennedy’s texts were “disingenuous and arrogant,” and she questioned his suggestion to meet in person.
“Meet ‘face to face?’ What woman wants to do that?” she said.
Although Kennedy has previously alluded to having “so many skeletons in my closet,” recent reporting on allegations against him are not likely to improve things for his flailing presidential campaign. In May, The New York Times reported that Kennedy had said in a 2012 deposition that part of his brain had been eaten by a worm. The Vanity Fair report also included a suggestion that Kennedy may have eaten dog meat; he told “Breaking Points” that the barbecued carcass in the photo was actually a goat.
This week, when asked by The Boston Globe if more women could come forward with allegations similar to Cooney’s, Kennedy said, “I don’t know. We’ll see what happens.”