Robert F. Kennedy Jr. apologized to Eliza Cooney via text message after she publicly accused him of sexually assaulting her in the 1990s. She said she feels the third-party presidential candidate’s apology was “disingenuous and arrogant.”
The text message was first reported Friday by the Washington Post. “Hey Eliza. It’s Bobby Kennedy. I hope you are well. Please call me if you have a moment,” Kennedy wrote in his first text to Eliza, which was sent on a Wednesday.
Kennedy followed up the next day with a second message saying he has no recollection of the alleged assault, but maintained that he feels remorse if he caused her harm.
“Hey Eliza. I tried to reach you by phone. I’d prefer to say this in person,” he wrote. “I read your description of an episode in which I touched you in an unwanted manner. I have no memory of this incident but I apologize sincerely for anything I ever did that made you feel uncomfortable or anything I did that offended you or hurt your feelings. I never intended you any harm. If I hurt you, it was inadvertent. I feel badly for doing so. If you feel comfortable, I’d like to tell you this by phone, and preferably, face to face. I recognize that this might not be possible. I have no agenda for sending this text other than making the most sincere ernest amends.”
NBC News has confirmed WaPo's reporting of a text from RFK Jr.'s phone number apologizing to Eliza Cooney, the woman who alleges Kennedy sexually assaulted her in the late 1990s. Asked whether more women might be coming forward, Kennedy told the Boston Globe "we'll see." pic.twitter.com/l2qQi6xnpB
— Brandy Zadrozny (@BrandyZadrozny) July 12, 2024
In a follow-up inquiry from the Post, the paper questioned Kennedy about how likely the possibility is that other women would come forward with allegations against him. His answer: “we’ll see.”
The Post’s article comes after Cooney spoke with Vanity Fair in an exclusive titled “RFK Jr.’s Family Doesn’t Want Him to Run Even They May Not Know His Darkest Secrets,” published on July 2. Vanity Fair details several accusations, including the Kennedy family’s push for Kennedy to drop out of his the presidential race, with issues including Kennedy allegedly meeting with Trump and Cooney’s accusations.
Cooney, who worked as a weekend nanny for the Kennedys during the late ’90s, said Kennedy sexually assaulted and/or harassed her on at least three separate occasions. In the first incident, she accused him of groping her from behind while in a pantry when she was 23. Kennedy was 45 and married with five children at the time. While he wouldn’t provide a comment to the Post about Cooney’s accusations, he said that “the text message speaks for itself.”
From Cooney’s perspective, she felt Kennedy’s text-based apology lacked honesty.
“It was disingenuous and arrogant,” Cooney said of Kennedy’s text message, according to the Post. “I’m not sure how somebody has a true apology for something that they don’t admit to recalling. I did not get a sense of remorse. And as far as Kennedy’s suggestion to meet in person to discuss he matter.”
“Meet ‘face to face?’ What woman wants to do that?” Cooney questioned. Cooney, who had been interested while working for Kennedy in going into environmental law, detailed the ordeal in her journal, in which she pondered Kennedy’s intentions. Kennedy made his name as an environmental lawyer.
“It seemed like he thought I was somebody else or wasn’t paying attention,” she wrote at the time. “Like he would come to every once in a while and snap out of it or I would move away. It was like he was on something or really tired or was missing Mary or testing me.”
She also opened up about two other instances of Kennedy’s alleged inappropriate behavior, including a situation in which Kennedy came up to her shirtless and asked her to rub lotion on his back. In a third incident, she said, Kennedy approached her from behind, placed his hands on her hips and caressed the sides of her breasts.
“I remember being like, ‘Oh my God, what is even happening right now?’” Cooney told the Post. “It’s very much like being quiet because you’re hiding from somebody under the bed or something, you know? That’s how I felt.” Cooney shared that she was nervous to leave the job, fearing she’d never land her dream career.
“I felt as though if I walked away, all the investment I put in would be for naught,” she said. “It was my first job. I didn’t want that to be a failure. And it was for Bobby Kennedy, who was at the time a prominent environmental lawyer, which was the work I wanted to go into.” Cooney never went further with an environmental litigation career, the Post noted.
Kennedy remains in the race as a controversial independent presidential hopeful who’s yet to put down his dukes in his brawl against President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.
On April 19, 2023, Kennedy launched his presidential campaign in Boston for his shot at a seat in the Oval Office. Aside from him being a member of the Kennedy family and anti-vaccine activist, he’s also an environmental lawyer who has described himself as a teller of truths and claims he will “end the division” in the U.S.
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