Democratic party accuses RFK Jr campaign of colluding with Super Pac

The Democrats’ national controlling committee complained on Friday that Robert F Kennedy Jr’s third-party presidential campaign and a fund supporting him are colluding against campaign rules to get the dynastic political candidate on election ballots.

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Kennedy and his Team Kennedy campaign are accused by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) of accepting $10m to $15m in in-kind contributions from American Values 2024, a political action committee – or Pac – which supports Kennedy.

The DNC complaint alleges that the Super Pac is coordinating “its activity with Mr Kennedy and his campaign in a way that violates federal campaign finance laws”.

Kennedy, who in November was polling higher, at 52%, in terms of voter favorability than Biden or Trump, is attempting to get on the ballot in at least 10 states.

The pro-Kennedy American Values 2024 Pac is supported by Tim Mellon, a Donald Trump campaign donor who has pumped $15m into its coffers. Co-founder Tony Lyons told CBS News that the Democrats’ complaint “is just another desperate DNC tactic to defame Kennedy, vilify him and drain his campaign funds”.

But in a press briefing on Friday, DNC legal counsel Robert Lenhard said that “rather than doing the hard work itself using money raised in compliance with the candidate contribution limits, the campaign is taking shortcuts”.

Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, Kennedy’s campaign manager and daughter-in-law, told the outlet that the Democrats’ complaint “is a nonissue being raised by a partisan political entity that seems to be increasingly concerned with its own candidate and viability”.

Fox Kennedy said the campaign had not received any signatures from American Values Pac or any other Pac. The campaign had also avoided providing any information “that is not available to every volunteer and media outlet on our public website”, she added.

The complaint was filed on the same day that Democrats began furious counterattacks on justice department special counsel Robert Hur over parts of a report into highly sensitive government documents found in Joe Biden’s garage. The report described the president as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory”.

DNC officials were asked if they are concerned Kennedy, 70, might win the support of swing state voters as Biden’s age (81) and mental acuity becomes a significant re-election issue.

Trump, 77, has had a similar amount of public gaffes confusing the names of prominent political figures – and he has more than 90 criminal charges pending against him, including for trying to subvert the results of the 2020 election that he lost to Biden. But a notable NBC News poll published on Sunday found Trump holds the edge with voters on the issue of having the necessary mental and physical health to be president.

DNC adviser Ramsey Reid said the party is “concerned that Donald Trump and his mega-donors are propping up RFK Jr”.

Kennedy is the son of the former attorney general and US senator who was assassinated in 1968 as he ran for the Democratic presidential nomination.