RFK Jr.’s team announces Trump endorsement in Pa. court filing, asks that Kennedy be removed from ballot

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 is working to have his name withdrawn from the presidential ballot in Pennsylvania and nine other battleground states while suspending his campaign activities, the independent candidate announced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

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

In a long-winded speech late Friday afternoon, Kennedy said he would remain on the 2024 presidential ballot in solid red and blue states, but that he felt he had to remove his name in battleground states to avoid handing the election to Democrats.

“In my heart, I no longer believe that I have a realistic path to electoral victory in the face of this relentless systematic censorship and media control,” Kennedy said. “By staying on the ballot in battleground states, I would have likely handed the election over to the Democrats.”

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

Kennedy had initially launched his campaign as a Democrat before becoming an independent last year. His famous family has distanced himself from his candidacy and several members endorsed President Joe Biden for reelection, prior to his withdrawal from the race.

The independent candidate said he spoke to Trump for the first time on 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-vaccine conspiracy theories in a leaked video of the exchange).

Kennedy said he would be joining Trump’s campaign and signaled he’d been offered a post related to chronic disease management in a potential Trump administration but did not cite a specific role.

On ongoing legal challenges and a Pennsylvania judge’s response to his request will determine whether Kennedy’s name ultimately remains on Pennsylvania’s November ballot.

The longtime environmental lawyer and anti-vaccine activist’s long-shot campaign had struggled in recent weeks as his already low poll numbers dropped and his name was booted from New York’s November ballot.

Kennedy is facing challenges to ballot access in several states, including Pennsylvania where he arrived in Harrisburg Tuesday too late to testify in defense of his candidacy.

The deadline for candidates in Pennsylvania to voluntarily withdraw their names from the November ballot passed on Aug. 12. However, according to the Pennsylvania Department of State, two paths remain for Kennedy’s name to be dropped from list of presidential candidates — a court petition for removal or a ruling against him in the ongoing challenge to his candidacy.

In Friday’s filing, which was first reported by the Associated Press, Kennedy appeared to begin the process of removing himself from the ballot when his attorney, Paul Rossi, withdrew the campaign’s opposition to the challenge and asked the court to dismiss Kennedy’s nomination papers.

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

In an amended filing later in the day Kennedy’s attorneys said they misstated the reason for asking for Kennedy’s name to be removed from the ballot. They did not offer a new reason but still asked that Kennedy be removed from the ballot and withdrew their opposition to the challenge to his candidacy.

Even before Kennedy’s plans to potentially exit the race became public the candidate was at risk of losing his spot on Pennsylvania’s ballot.

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

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

The Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court 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 opposition to the objection paves the way for the court to remove him from the ballot.

He went a step further by formally asking the court to remove him, a process that would have been required if the judge ruled in favor of keeping Kennedy on the ballot.

Though Kennedy’s candidacy does not present a serious challenge to either Vice President Kamala Harris or Trump, Republicans and Democrats had worried Kennedy could act as a spoiler, pulling enough votes from one candidate or another to decide the election in the commonwealth and other crucial battlegrounds.

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

Third party candidates have a history of acting as spoilers in Pennsylvania. In 2016, Green Party Candidate Jill Stein received nearly 50,000 votes in the state while former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lost the state by just over 44,000 votes.

Kennedy’s endorsement of Trump may sway some potential Kennedy voters to vote for the former president.

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

Kirschman said he felt he was better off under Trump’s presidency but wasn’t a fan of the former president’s. Kennedy in the cabinet, Kirschman said, would change his calculus.

“I may not be voting for Trump but I’m voting for RFK being in the executive branch,” Kirschman said.

Staff writer Jeremy Roebuck contributed to this article.