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RFK Jr. Seeks Justice in Ongoing Libel Suit Against Daily Kos Writer
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https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/rfk-jr-libel-suit-daily-kos-writer-david-vickrey/
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Lawyers representing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Tuesday filed a memorandum in a defamation lawsuit brought against Daily Kos writer David Vickrey. The memo urged the court to deny Vickrey’s motion to dismiss the suit.

Kennedy is the founder and former chairman of Children’s Health Defense (CHD) and President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The lawsuit — filed Oct. 23 in the State of Maine Superior Court — alleges Vickrey made false statements about Kennedy that damaged Kennedy’s reputation, including accusing Kennedy of actions that contributed to the deadly Samoa measles outbreak and wanting to cause the death of Black people.

Last month, Vickrey filed a motion to dismiss the suit. Robert Barnes and Terry Mitrenga, two of Kennedy’s attorneys, in their memo, argued that the court should hear the case.

“A lie is a lie,” they wrote. “Vickrey knowingly published lies about Kennedy intending to harm his reputation. Indeed, Vickrey bragged about it over and over, republishing the lies to the public repeatedly to new audiences for multiple years. Now Vickrey claims to be above the law.”

CHD CEO Mary Holland told The Defender:

“If Mr. Vickrey stands by everything he’s written, let him now tell that to the court — let him prove that what he has said about Kennedy was truthful and without malice. That’s his opportunity now in a court of law. If he can’t meet that bar, I’ll look forward to seeing damages assessed against him.”

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Legal battle has dragged on for four years

Tuesday’s filing was the latest move in a four-year saga in which Vickrey has attempted to shut down legal efforts to hold him accountable for libel.

Libel is a method of defamation that exposes a person to public hatred or injures their business or profession, according to the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School. Defamation is a statement that injures someone’s reputation.

On Aug. 29, 2020, Daily Kos ran an article, “Anti-Vaxxer RFK JR. joins neo-Nazis in massive Berlin ‘Anti-Corona’ Protest.” Vickrey, who wrote the article, published it under the pseudonym “DowneastDem.”

The article described an Aug. 22, 2020, speech Kennedy delivered to more than 1 million people at the Rally for Peace and Freedom in Berlin organized by the German group Querdenken 711, or “Critical Thinking 711.”

Vickrey wrote, “The protest was organized by right-wing extremist organizations — including the AfD party and various anti-Semitic conspiracy groups as well as the neo-Nazi NPD party.”

The article “falsely tarnished Kennedy by associating him with Nazis, anti-Semites and right-wing extremists as organizers of the demonstration,” said Holland, who also spoke at the demonstration in Berlin.

“None of these claims had any merit, and the defamation affected CHD as Kennedy was acting as our spokesman,” she said.

As The Defender reported, the Querdenken movement is a broad-based, peaceful citizens’ movement for freedom, peace and human rights. It opposes Nazism and anti-semitism. Among the event’s speakers were doctors, lawyers, clergy of every persuasion, soldiers, police officers, parents, children, world-famous athletes, politicians from Germany’s Green Party, human rights activists and leaders of nonprofit organizations.

An attorney representing Kennedy wrote a letter to Daily Kos, asking the online news site to retract the article and explaining that it contained obvious falsehoods. Daily Kos refused.

On Dec. 1, 2020, CHD’s lawyers filed court papers in the Supreme Court of Westchester County, New York, ordering Daily Kos to show why “DowneastDem’s” identity and contact information should not be disclosed.

“Through rigorous sleuthing,” Holland said, “CHD was able to identify ‘DowneastDem’s’ true identity: David Vickrey.”

Since 2020, Vickrey has continued to publish defamatory statements on Daily Kos and Twitter/X.

In 2023, Kennedy sued Vickrey in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire, thinking that Vickrey had a professional connection to that state. However, upon discovery, it became evident that Vickrey’s work relationships in New Hampshire had ended a decade prior.

In January 2024, a New Hampshire federal judge tossed the suit, Daily Kos reported. U.S. District Judge Steven McAuliffe ruled the case was dead since Vickrey did not write the article in New Hampshire.

Now Kennedy’s lawyers have filed the case in Maine, where Vickrey lives. CHD is providing financial support for the suit.

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Kennedy says Vickrey’s statements are untrue

The new suit alleges that Vickrey published statements between May and October 2023 on social media, including Daily Kos and X, that implied or directly made false claims about Kennedy.

The complaint lists multiple false claims, including:

Kennedy helped cause the deadly Samoa measles outbreak.
Kennedy opposed all vaccines.
Kennedy expressed “dangerous vaccine conspiracies” that caused the death of 234,000 Americans.
Kennedy wanted to cause the death of Black people.
Kennedy said COVID-19 was designed to save Jews.
A simple German-to-English translation of a German newspaper reporter’s article said Kennedy knowingly joined, supported and associated with a neo-Nazi party, the National Democratic Party of Germany, in Berlin.
“Each of Vickrey’s factual statements about me are false,” Kennedy stated in his affidavit. “I never had a role in, much less caused, the Samoa Measles Outbreak.”

Kennedy said he has never opposed all vaccines. “I did not cause the death of any Americans, much less 234,000 Americans, by expressing ‘dangerous vaccine conspiracies.’”

He added:

“I never wanted nor caused the death of thousands of African-Americans, Jews, or anyone else. I never said that COVID-19 was designed to save Jews. I never joined any neo-Nazi party group in Germany, at any protest, or in any other manner, at any time, in any way.”

Kennedy said he has spent his “entire career as an advocate for constituencies neglected by institutional power, including important legal victories for minority communities, impoverished constituencies, and advocating for people of every race, religion, and creed, opposing all forms of discriminatory behavior and speaking out against antisemitism and racism.”

“For two decades,” he wrote, “I spoke out in favor of safe and effective vaccines for children, and I support the critical medical doctrine of individual informed consent, relying on principles developed by American jurists in the Nuremberg Code.”


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Vickrey claims he was referring to RFK Jr.’s uncle in some of the posts

Meanwhile, Vickrey in his affidavit dismissed allegations that three of his social media posts in question contained false statements about Kennedy. He contended that those posts were about former President John F. Kennedy.

The posts have “nothing whatsoever to do with Plaintiff beyond the fact that it concerns his uncle,” Vickrey wrote.

Another one of the posts was published by another author or content creator, he said.

Vickrey said that in another post he was “encouraging a follower to look into Plaintiff and his positions on vaccines.”

Vickrey did not deny authorship of the Daily Kos posts referenced in the suit, including the article, “Anti-Vaxxer RFK JR. joins neo-Nazis in massive Berlin ‘Anti-Corona’ Protest.”

CHD General Counsel Kim Mack Rosenberg told The Defender that Vickrey is free to have opinions that differ from Kennedy’s — but Vickrey shouldn’t be allowed to spread false information about Kennedy.

Freedom of speech is not the same as libel. “Libel is not afforded constitutional protection,” Mack Rosenberg explained. She said libel can be an “insidious form of censorship” because it spreads false information designed to deter people from considering a speaker’s viewpoint.

“Particularly in the past few years,” Mack Rosenberg said, “censorship and spreading of untruths have gone hand in hand to attempt to silence those who challenge a certain narrative, accusing them of spreading misinformation and disinformation, when in fact, many times it is those seeking to silence them who are spreading falsehoods.”

Lawyers representing Vickrey and Kennedy did not respond by deadline to our request for comment.

Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D.
Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D.
Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D., is a reporter and researcher for The Defender based in Fairfield, Iowa.
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