Ex-US presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr has claimed he is being investigated for cutting off a dead whale’s head with a chainsaw.
Mr Kennedy Jr’s daughter Kathleen previously told how her father decapitated the dead whale 30 years ago when it washed ashore in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, with her father strapping it to the family car for a drive back home to New York.
Speaking about the incident at a campaign event for Donald Trump in Glendale, Arizona, he said: “I received a letter from the National Marine Fisheries Institute saying that they were investigating me for collecting a whale specimen 20 years ago."
Ms Kennnedy said in a 2012 interview that the incident happened when she was six.
"Every time we accelerated on the highway, whale juice would pour into the windows of the car, and it was the rankest thing on the planet," the 36-year-old told Town & Country magazine.
"We all had plastic bags over our heads with mouth holes cut out, and people on the highway were giving us the finger, but that was just normal day-to-day stuff for us."
RFK Jr claimed he was being targeted by the Government, telling Trump supporters: "This is all about the weaponisation of our government against political opponents."
He also previously in a statement to NBC claimed he had never killed the whale.
Animal rights campaigners had urged an investigation, saying that under the US Marine Mammal Protection Act it is illegal to possess any part of an animal, dead or alive, which is protected.
Mr Kennedy Jr last month suspended his presidential bid in order to support Trump for the Oval Office in November’s vote.
The staunch anti-vaxxer and Covid conspiracy theorist previously hit headlines after admitting to staging the discovery of a dead bear cub in New York City's Central Park.
He said he had intended to skin the bear, which he came at by the roadside, but instead thought it would be amusing to stage a scene that made it look as though the bear had been killed by a cyclist in Central Park.
When the admission came to light following a New Yorker profile, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation said it was illegal.
However, action could not be taken as the statute of limitations had run out.
