RFK Jr. Endorses Trump, Signals Withdrawal from Pennsylvania Court Race

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is seeking to have his name removed from the presidential ballot in Pennsylvania and nine other key battleground states while suspending his campaign activities, the independent candidate announced Friday.

Kennedy’s attorneys announced the move in a motion filed earlier in the day in a Pennsylvania court asking a judge to remove Kennedy’s name from the state’s ballot because independent candidate planned to support former President Donald Trump.

In a lengthy speech slow Friday afternoon, Kennedy said he will remain on the 2024 presidential ballot in states with powerful Republican and Democratic leanings but believes he needs to remove his name from swing states to avoid handing the election to Democrats.

“I no longer believe in my heart that I have a realistic path to victory in the face of this relentless systematic censorship and media control,” Kennedy said. “Remaining on the ballot in the states where the outcome is uncertain would likely concede the election to the Democrats.”

Kennedy is the son of the slow Senator Robert F. Kennedy and the nephew of President John F. Kennedy, two Democratic icons who were assassinated in the 1960s.

Kennedy initially campaigned as a Democrat before becoming an independent last year. His famed family distanced themselves from his candidacy, and several members endorsed President Joe Biden for reelection before he dropped out of the race.

The independent candidate said he spoke to Trump for the first time the day the former president survived an assassination attempt in Butler County, Pennsylvania, and learned the two men agreed on more than he realized (Trump and Kennedy discussed anti-vaxxer conspiracy theories in a video recording of that conversation).

Kennedy said he would join the Trump campaign and hinted that he had been offered a position related to chronic disease management in a potential Trump administration, but did not mention a specific role.

Ongoing legal wrangling and a Pennsylvania judge’s response to his motion will decide whether Kennedy’s name ultimately appears on Pennsylvania’s ballot in November.

The longtime environmental lawyer and anti-vaccine activist’s campaign has struggled in recent weeks, with his poll ratings dropping and his name being removed from the November ballot in New York.

Kennedy has had trouble accessing ballots in several states, including Pennsylvania, where he arrived in Harrisburg too slow on Tuesday to testify in defense of his candidacy.

How could Kennedy’s name be withdrawn from the ballot?

The deadline for Pennsylvania candidates to voluntarily withdraw their names from the November election passed on Aug. 12. However, according to the Pennsylvania Department of State, there are still two options for removing Kennedy’s name from the presidential nomination rolls — a court motion to remove him or a ruling against him in the ongoing proceedings challenging his candidacy.

In Friday’s document: which was first reported by the Associated Press, Kennedy’s process of withdrawing from the ballot began when his attorney, Paul Rossi, withdrew the campaign’s opposition to the challenge to his candidacy and asked the court to dismiss Kennedy’s nomination papers.

The withdrawal came “as a result of today’s endorsement of Donald Trump for President of the United States,” the documents said.

In an amended motion filed later that day, Kennedy’s lawyers said they had incorrectly stated the reason they had asked to have Kennedy’s name removed from the ballot. They did not provide a modern reason but still asked to have Kennedy’s name removed from the ballot and withdrew their opposition to challenging his candidacy.

The Ongoing Challenge to Kennedy’s Candidacy

Even before Kennedy’s plans to potentially withdraw from the race became public, the candidate was at risk of losing his seat in Pennsylvania.

Earlier this month, a Democratic political action committee challenged Kennedy’s candidacy in court, arguing that he had not collected enough signatures to appear on the ballot and that the petition was invalid because Kennedy had filed it using a New York address where he did not live rather than his California residence.

Parts of the petition echoed the arguments of the same PAC, Clear Choice Action, used in New York where Kennedy’s name was mentioned. was removed from the candidate list last week.

The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania held an evidentiary hearing in the case this week and is expected to issue a ruling in the coming weeks. Kennedy’s withdrawal of his objection to the challenge clears the way for the court to remove him from the nomination rolls.

He went a step further, formally asking the court to remove him from the nomination list, which would be necessary if a judge ruled in favor of keeping Kennedy on the ballot.

What will Kennedy’s departure mean?

Although Kennedy’s candidacy does not pose a grave challenge to either Vice President Kamala Harris or Trump, both Republicans and Democrats feared Kennedy could sway the election by siphoning votes from one candidate or the other, which could decide the election in the Commonwealth and other key battlegrounds.

Kennedy was polls at 5% with registered voters in Pennsylvania, according to a poll released earlier this month by The New York Times and Siena College. That figure was larger than Harris’ 2-point lead over former Trump in the poll.

Independent candidates have a history of being spoilers in PennsylvaniaIn 2016, Green Party candidate Jill Stein She won nearly 50,000 votes in the state, while former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lost by just over 44,000 votes.

Kennedy’s support for Trump could convince some potential Kennedy voters to vote for the former president.

Aaron Kirschman, a York County voter who planned to vote for Kennedy, said he would likely vote for Trump if Kennedy was promised a spot in the former president’s Cabinet.

Kirschman said he feels better under Trump but is no fan of the former president. A Kennedy in the cabinet, Kirschman said, would change his calculations.

“I may not vote for Trump, but I will vote to put RFK in the executive branch,” Kirschman said.

Staff writer Jeremy Roebuck contributed to this article.