Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s daughter-in-law took a private meeting with John Ratcliffe, President-elect Trump’s pick to run the CIA, in an apparent bid for a high-ranking position within the agency, The Washington Post reported.
The Post reported that Amaryllis Fox Kennedy met with Ratcliffe to discuss serving as deputy director of the agency, which she has harshly and openly criticized.
The Post cited “people briefed on the discussions,” who indicated interest from Trump himself in having the younger Kennedy in a national security role in his administration after running her father-in-law’s independent presidential campaign.
Following the newspaper’s reporting, Fox Kennedy, who previously worked as a CIA officer, took to the social platform X detailing what she perceives as grave institutional flaws within the agency. In a lengthy post, she described a “drastic falloff in the quality and quantity of our human intelligence” over the past decade and a half regarding its handling of foreign governments such as Russia, China and Iran.
“This is the direct result of political appointees weaponizing the Agency against the very American citizens it was created to defend,” she wrote.
Fox Kennedy, who is married to Kennedy's son, went on to lament “members of the intelligence community” who have, in her view, pushed a specific political agenda about Trump’s dealings with Russia — the GOP-dubbed “Russia hoax” — and other partisan narratives.
She also seemed to mock the emerging pushback among some in the intelligence space about having a member of the Kennedy family near the agency decades after fringe conspiracy theories about the CIA’s assassination of former President John F. Kennedy failed to get traction with the American public.
“A Kennedy at CIA, they fret. No more weaponization of our intelligence services, they complain. She opposes censorship, they whine. She doesn't believe in arming terrorists, they moan. She thinks coups and wars should be avoided, they cry. She believes in the President, they despair. A DJT loyalist at Langley, they wail. She must be stopped at all costs!” she wrote.
According to the Post, the Republican president-elect, who has already tapped unconventional figures for leading government jobs, has expressed being “impressed” with Fox Kennedy after meeting with her and others at his Palm Beach, Fla., club Mar-a-Lago.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was briefly being pushed by some Trump allies for a top CIA position before ultimately being chosen to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. Since then, Kennedy’s been privately fixated on presenting an alternative story without evidence about the death of his uncle, the former president.
Axios reported this week that “RFK Jr. has been telling people that Fox Kennedy … would help get to the bottom of the JFK assassination,” citing “two Republican sources.”
The idea has already raised concerns among Kennedy’s own family, which has been vehemently against his new alignment with Trump. In the latest sign of pushback, his cousin Jack Schlossberg called Kennedy a “Russian spy,” linking to the Axios report on X.
“.@RobertKennedyJr you are so obviously a Russian spy … You all think I’m joking. Hahahaha,” he wrote.
