Republicans reject Democratic calls to disinvite RFK Jr. as hearing witness

House Republicans are rejecting calls from Democrats to disinvite Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as a witness for a Thursday hearing after he claimed the COVID-19 virus was targeted to spare Jewish and Chinese people.

“I disagree with everything he said,” Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said Monday.

But he declined to disinvite Kennedy, who is running for president as a Democrat, from the House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government hearing on Thursday examining censorship.

“The hearing that we have this week is about censorship,” McCarthy continued. “I don't think censoring somebody is actually the answer here.”

Kennedy is set to testify as a Republican-picked witness.

But after the New York Post reported his comments over the weekend, Democrats are pushing back on his inclusion. 

Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), Daniel Goldman (D-N.Y.), and Judy Chu (D-Calif.) wrote a letter to McCarthy and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) on Monday urging them to rescind their invitation to Kennedy.

“Mr. Kennedy has repeatedly and recently spread vile and dangerous antisemitic and anti-Asian conspiracy theories that tarnish his credibility as a witness and must not be legitimized with his appearance before the U.S. Congress nor given the platform of an official committee hearing to spread his baseless and discriminatory views,” the Democratic members said in the letter, shared with The Hill. 

“The conspiracies promoted by Mr. Kennedy were made without any basis in scientific evidence, which is not a surprise, since no such evidence exists. In fact, the British Office of National Statistics recently revealed data showing that British Jews had a higher mortality rate from COVID-19 in the UK than other ethnic groups,” they continued.

Asked about the calls to disinvite Kennedy, the House Judiciary Committee pointed to Jordan’s comments to Politico that echoed McCarthy.

“I totally disagree with what he said, but he’s a Democrat. I disagree with other things he said too. But we’re having him because of censorship,” Jordan said.

In a statement on Twitter, Kennedy criticized the New York Post for allegedly breaking an off-the-record agreement and argued his statements about the ethnic effects of COVID-19 and claims about governments developing ethnically-targeted bioweapons were misrepresented.

“I do not believe and never implied that the ethnic effect was deliberately engineered,” Kennedy said.

Mychael Schnell contributed.