Robert F Kennedy Jr entered the 2024 presidential race as a Democrat in April. Now, he's broken with the blue party to stand as an independent candidate and "spoil" both Biden and Trump's chances of success.
His sudden antagonism towards Trump marks a departure from the candidates' cross-party camaraderie, drawing criticism from Trump's campaign manager, more on that later. But RFK has never been a stranger to controversy...
The fourth Kennedy to run for US president, read on to discover his checkered past and how he made his fortune.
All dollar amounts in US dollars.
Born in Washington DC on January 17, 1954, RFK Jr is the son of Robert "Bobby" F Kennedy and his wife Ethel. Also known as "Bobby," he was the third of the couple's 11 children and was raised at his family's sprawling Hickory Hill estate in McLean, Virginia. His childhood was also spent at the Kennedy Compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts.
His idyllic upbringing was brutally upended in November 1963, however, when his uncle, President John F Kennedy, was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.
Further tragedy struck on June 5, 1968, when Kennedy was 14. His father, who was campaigning to be president, was shot in Los Angeles and died in hospital the following day.
The grief-stricken youngster is shown here at his father's funeral, acting as lead pallbearer. The assassination devastated Ethel, who was reportedly left so bereft that she neglected her children and left them to their own devices.
Emotionally struggling himself, the young Kennedy turned to drugs to cope.
The traumatized teen started using marijuana and taking LSD, before getting into harder narcotics like heroin.
RFK Jr was expelled from two prestigious boarding schools due to his drug-taking and, in 1970, the troubled 16-year-old and his cousin Bobby Shriver were arrested for cannabis possession and placed on 13 months' probation.
The young Kennedy's finances weren't too healthy, either, with the Irish Examiner reporting that his father had spent much of his inheritance on the 1968 presidential run.
Ethel received the lion's share of what was left, which was mostly tied up in trusts, and the relatively paltry amount that remained was divided among the 11 kids.
In spite of his drug problems and money issues, RFK Jr still managed to gain a place at Harvard University.
The Kennedy scion graduated from the academic institution in 1976 with a bachelor's degree in American history and literature.
And his education didn't end there. Following a stint at the London School of Economics, RFK Jr earned himself a law degree from the University of Virginia, followed by a master's degree in environmental law from Pace University.
In 1982, the law grad landed his first proper job as an assistant district attorney for Manhattan, earning a salary of $20,000, which equates to around $63,000 today.
He also tied the knot, marrying his college sweetheart Emily Black in the spring of that year. The couple went on to have two children together.
Happily married and all set for a super-successful legal career, Kennedy had seemingly landed on his feet – only for everything to come crashing down the following year...
Despite things looking good on paper, Kennedy's drug addictions had gone from bad to worse. Having failed the New York bar exam in November 1982, he flunked it again in February 1983.
In September of that year, the strung-out Kennedy overdosed on a flight to Rapid City, South Dakota. Medics and police were called, and he was found to be in possession of around a gram of heroin.
He was swiftly arrested, and the incident served as a wake-up call, prompting Kennedy to check into rehab. In a statement released at the time via his uncle, Senator Edward Kennedy, RFK Jr declared: "With the best medical help I can find, I am determined to beat this problem."
The arrest was also a blessing in disguise for his career.
In February 1984, he was sentenced to two years' probation and 1,500 hours of community service, which involved working for environmental group the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Riverkeeper, a non-profit devoted to preserving the Hudson River.
RFK Jr threw himself into the roles, and his passion and dedication so impressed his bosses that, by 1986, he'd landed senior attorney positions at both organizations.
In the meantime, Kennedy and his wife Emily had purchased a trophy home in the historic New York village of Mount Kisco.
He also finally passed the New York bar exam, coasting the fitness and character portion despite his drug conviction. As an attack-dog lawyer for the NRDC and Riverkeeper, Kennedy spearheaded lawsuits that led to everything from the banning of shooting lead shot on Long Island Sound to major clean-ups of the polluted Hudson River.
Starting in the mid-1980s, Kennedy helped shape the NRDC's international program for environmental, energy, and human rights, and he's also a strong advocate for Indigenous people.
Over the years, he's fought hard to protect the rights of these communities and prevent energy and other infrastructure projects from damaging their way of life, chiefly by speaking out and suing corporations on their behalf.
Kennedy has also battled to safeguard poor and minority neighborhoods, which he's said are used by unscrupulous polluters as dumping grounds.
In his very first case as an environmental lawyer, he represented the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in a lawsuit seeking to stop a waste transfer station from being built in the Hudson Valley's oldest Black neighborhood.
In 1987, he founded the Environmental Litigation Clinic at Pace Law School, his alma mater, and held the post of supervising attorney for 30 years.
During those three decades, Kennedy organized students to prosecute a string of lawsuits against corporations that were responsible for polluting the Hudson River and other New York waterways.
His marriage to Emily hit the rocks in the early 1990s. Reportedly a serial womanizer, he'd allegedly cheated on his wife from the get-go, and the litany of affairs resulted in the couple separating in 1992.
They divorced in 1994 after RFK Jr shacked up with interior designer Mary Richardson, whom he later married.
Describing Kennedy as "a wonderful father, but... not a faithful husband," Emily received a share of the Mount Kisco property worth $500,000, which Mary later acquired from her.
RFK Jr and Mary had four children together before their marriage broke down, with reports suggesting it was yet again due to Kennedy's cheating.
But as well as his self-termed "lust demons," Mary's issues with drugs and alcohol also took their toll.
In 2010, Kennedy officially filed for divorce and later began a relationship with Curb Your Enthusiasm actress Cheryl Hines. Two years later, as the divorce proceedings were being finalized, Mary tragically took her own life.
In 1998, Kennedy co-founded a bottled water company called Tear of the Clouds LLC, which donated all its profits to Waterkeeper. It was later sold to Nestlé.
The following year, he helped found Waterkeeper Alliance, a global umbrella organization that works to protect waterways worldwide.
Building further on his work fighting major polluters, Kennedy turned his attention to factory farms during the 1990s. He toured America to galvanize support from independent, small-scale producers before launching legal action against factory farms in several states.
The Kennedy scion has also written various op-eds for The New York Times condemning industrial farming.
In 2000, the hotshot eco attorney moved his career up a notch by founding his own environmental law firm along with lawyer Kevin Madonna.
Kennedy & Madonna, LLP has won numerous accolades for successfully pursuing contamination cases on behalf of non-profits, American Indian tribes, school districts, and other worthy plaintiffs.
It was also in the year 2000 that Kennedy reportedly first considered running for the US presidency.
He developed a handy sideline media career in the 2000s, becoming a co-host of Ring of Fire, a syndicated political radio show in 2004.
The following year, he released Crimes Against Nature, which quickly became a New York Times Best Seller. All in all, he's written or contributed to more than a dozen books, and he also co-founded EcoWatch, an environmental news site that still operates today.
As an eco-activist staunchly opposed to fossil fuels, Kennedy caused a stir in 2005 when he clashed with environmental groups over plans to build an offshore wind farm off the coast of Cape Cod.
Instead of promoting the Cape Wind Project, he slammed it as a waste of money and chose to side with the area's commercial fishing industry by opposing it outright.
RFK Jr also raised eyebrows in 2005 when he wrote Deadly Immunity, a widely discredited article that was published by both Rolling Stone and Salon.
In the article, which is riddled with factual errors, Kennedy linked autism to vaccines containing the mercury-based preservative thiomersal. He also accused government health agencies of colluding with Big Pharma to conceal the risks of thiomersal from the public.
The article was later removed from the Salon website.
In 2008, it was reported that Kennedy had been diagnosed with a condition called spasmodic dysphonia, which makes speaking difficult.
RFK Jr said it had first presented itself as a mild tremble in his voice and, while he has regular Botox injections to control the worst of the symptoms, his voice nonetheless tends to quiver, and his speech can sound stilted.
On top of his activism, legal work, and media career, Kennedy has been involved in cleantech investing.
In 2009, he was made a venture partner at early Tesla investor VantagePoint Capital Partners. In addition to that, he holds a senior advisory position at Starwood Energy Group, is a partner of eco-dyeing company ColorZen, and co-owns the leading grid management firm GridBright.
In 2014, RFK Jr. walked down the aisle with actress Cheryl Hines at the Kennedy Compound in Hyannis Port. The pair reportedly first met after being introduced by Hines's Curb Your Enthusiasm co-star Larry David.
Two years later, Kennedy became chairman of the World Mercury Project, which later rebranded to Children's Health Defense. The non-profit activist group is notorious for its anti-vax agenda, and has blamed vaccines and chemical exposure for everything from food allergies to ADHD.
During the latter half of the 2010s, RFK J.'s anti-vax activism ramped up further. In 2017, he worked with actor Robert De Niro to launch a sham challenge that promised to give $100,000 to anyone who could prove the safety of flu vaccines that had already been deemed safe across the board.
Other activities around this time included a trip to Samoa in June 2019, where he spouted his unfounded theories about the MMR vaccine. Just a few months later, the island nation was hit with a measles outbreak that killed scores of children.
In between propagating falsehoods surrounding vaccines, Bobby found the time to join Florida-based law firm Morgan & Morgan in 2016.
A year later, he took on Monsanto with his partners, suing the chemicals behemoth on behalf of groundsman Dewayne Johnson (left), who claimed he had developed cancer as a consequence of using the biotech corporation's Roundup weedkiller.
RFK Jr and the team won the case in 2018 and Johnson was granted damages of $289 million, though the award was later reduced to $21 million after appeal.
A 2019 investigation by the journal Vaccine found that Kennedy was the number-one source of anti-vax ads on Facebook.
By the end of the 2010s, his crusade against vaccines had reached fever pitch and was causing so much consternation that three members of his own family, including his sister Kathleen Kennedy, wrote a Politico article that condemned his "tragically wrong" anti-vax stance.
Then the COVID pandemic struck, and his anti-vax activism took an even darker turn.
In addition to embarking on a personal vendetta against Bill Gates and chief medical adviser Dr Anthony Fauci, which involved publishing a much-derided 2021 book, Kennedy was also banned from Instagram and YouTube.
This came after his spreading of anti-COVID vaccine misinformation, and he was roundly condemned for comparing the criticism of anti-vaxxers to the Nazis' persecution of Jewish people and other groups.
As the New York Post has pointed out, his anti-vax crusade has been "paved with gold" and he's seemingly pocketed millions of dollars by railing against vaccines.
As well as earning a fortune from his work with Children's Health Defense, Kennedy is also said to have pocketed several million dollars off the back of bumper sales of his incendiary 2021 book The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health.
Aside from his anti-vax stance, he holds more than his fair share of other controversial views.
They include harsh criticism of the US military for its environmental practices, doubts over the official stories behind his uncle and father's assassinations, and the apparent belief that HIV may not cause AIDS. He's also voiced reservations about America's involvement in the war in Ukraine.
On July 20, he appeared before a Republican-led subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee to testify on concerns over censorship, during which he also attacked vaccines and made misleading claims about COVID-19.
These viewpoints, many of which are at odds with much of the Democrats' platform, were widely expected to put off potential Democrat voters. To make matters worse, Kennedy appointed former presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich as his campaign manager – a man many in the party consider off base.
His decision to stand independently, while unsurprising, has drawn the ire of Trump's campaign manager Steven Cheung, who released a statement saying: "Voters should not be deceived by anyone who pretends to have conservative values. The fact is that RFK has a disturbing background steeped in radical, liberal positions... A RFK candidacy is nothing more than a vanity project for a liberal Kennedy looking to cash in on his family's name."
But Kennedy's relationship with Trump hasn't always been sour...
In a Town Hall broadcast by NewsNation on June 28, Kennedy refused to say a bad word against Trump. When moderator Elizabeth Vargas asked what he thought about the 45th, Kennedy said: "I'm not going to attack other people personally," adding "I'm proud that President Trump likes me."
Some people have seen his remarks as nothing more than an attempt to keep potential voters onside, especially as he went on to say he also likes President Biden. But Kennedy's positive opinion of Trump is clearly reciprocated. Prompting Kennedy's comments, Trump has previously poured praise on his rival in multiple interviews. Speaking to NewsMax host Eric Bolling, the former president said of Kennedy: "I respect him. A lot of people respect him. He has some very important points to be made."
The same day, he also told radio host Howie Carr that Kennedy is "a common sense guy and so am I, so whether you're conservative or liberal, common sense is common sense... [He's] a very smart guy."
And while the candidates don't see eye to eye on everything, particularly the environment, they certainly share similarities, such as their distrust of life-saving vaccinations and refusal to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine. And despite Kennedy's claim that he "likes" Biden, and voted for him in 2020, it seems he and Trump both have little faith in the incumbent president's ability to be re-elected.
In an interview in May, Kennedy described Trump as "the most devastating debater, probably, since Abraham Lincoln." He went on to praise Trump's "capacity to obliterate and dispatch opponents," saying "President Biden needs to be on his toes."
Now, though, Kennedy has said Biden's age and Trump's ongoing legal problems have necessitated the presence of a third-party candidate.
And it's not just Trump's campaign that's condemned him; the extended Kennedy family has also denounced his bid for the White House. His cousin, Jack Schlossberg, Caroline Kennedy's son, called him an "embarrassment" on social media platform Instagram on July 21. He went on to accuse Kennedy of "trading in on Camelot.”
Prior to his break with the Democrats, several of Kennedy’s siblings also spoke publicly against his decision to challenge President Biden, as well as his many controversial remarks. They've since described his new campaign as "dangerous," writing in a joint statement on X (formerly Twitter): "Bobby might share the same name as our father, but he does not share the same values, vision or judgment. Today's announcement is deeply saddening for us. We denounce his candidacy and believe it to be perilous for our country."
However, RFK Jr said others in his family do support him.
However Kennedy performs in the upcoming election, he certainly won't have to worry about money – according to online sources, he has amassed a personal fortune of around $50 million. What's more, a super PAC supporting Kennedy had reportedly raised around $16 million by the end of July.
More than half of the $9.8 million the super PAC raised before June came from one man: Timothy Mellon, a former GOP donor who has previously given money to Trump. He described Kennedy as "the one Democrat who can win in the general election." So will Kennedy's decision to go solo help or hinder his chances? Only time will tell...
Want to learn more about Robert's famous family? Explore the lives and fortunes of the Kennedy clan