RFK Jr.'s campaign has hired a Jan. 6 conspiracy theorist for 'influencer engagement'

A recent hire on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s presidential campaign has raised eyebrows for his comments on the Jan. 6 riots. But, for a candidate who's been as willing to embrace conspiracy theories as Kennedy and has expressed muddled views on the insurrection, it's not entirely surprising.

Campaign finance records show that Kennedy's campaign initially hired a company called Total Virality in March, as NBC News reported. The firm, hired for “influencer engagement” per the filing, is run by Zach Henry, whose social media posts suggest that he's a Jan. 6 conspiracy theorist. (Neither Henry nor Kennedy's campaign responded to NBC News' request for comment.)

In posts on X dating to 2022 that NBC News found, Henry falsely called the insurrection "Democrat misdirection" and the House committee investigation into Jan. 6 a "witch hunt of patriots," and mocked the lingering trauma of congressional staffers who were in the Capitol when an angry mob stormed the building.

Given Trump's own valorization of the insurrectionists, it's no great shock that such views have not disqualified Henry from working in Republican politics: Henry served as deputy communications director for long-shot GOP primary candidate Vivek Ramaswamy before the businessman dropped out of the race.

But those beliefs also don't appear to have raised red flags for Kennedy, an independent candidate whose own views on Jan. 6 have been opportunistic in his apparent attempt to avoid alienating voters of either party, as well as weak on the facts. In April, his campaign called the rioters "activists," which a spokesperson later said was an "error." Later, Kennedy released a long statement to outline his personal views on Jan. 6, which he said "reasonable people" had told him was not a "true insurrection" (although he conceded he had not examined the evidence himself). He also wrongly asserted that the rioters did not carry weapons (he retracted this later) and claimed that federal law enforcement was being "weaponized" against Donald Trump.

This article was originally published on MSNBC.com