Fact check: RFK Jr.’s misleading viral claim about Secret Service protection

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination against President Joe Biden, baselessly suggested Friday that the Biden administration is singling him out for rare treatment by denying him Secret Service protection.

Kennedy tweeted that Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas had decided that Secret Service protection for him is “not warranted at this time.” Kennedy said this denial came after nearly three months with no response to his campaign’s request for Secret Service protection and despite his campaign having submitted a 67-page report “from the world’s leading protection firm, detailing unique and well established security and safety risks aside from commonplace death threats.”

CNN has no reason to dispute any of that; the Department of Homeland Security declined to comment on Kennedy’s tweet, which had received more than 12 million views as of Friday afternoon. But Kennedy began the tweet as follows: “Since the assassination of my father in 1968, candidates for president are provided Secret Service protection. But not me.”

That is highly misleading.