RFK Jr.'s family trust earns thousands from an oil and gas company

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who built his public profile as an environmental activist and crusader against polluters, earned tens of thousands of dollars from an oil and gas rights leasing company.

The independent presidential candidate reported the earnings on his financial disclosure form filed last June from Arctic Royalty Limited Partnership, which leases land for oil and gas extraction in Oklahoma, Texas and other states.

Arctic Royalty, which is part of a portfolio of investments from Kennedy’s family trust accounts, leases land to multiple companies that have been fined for pollution and regulatory infractions, as well as to the chemical subsidiary of the company that polluted East Palestine, Ohio, in the trail derailment last year.

Kennedy earned between $17,759 and $29,257 from Jan. 1, 2022, to June 30, 2023, from Arctic Royalty — which is a significant portion of the possible earnings from his three family trust accounts. Those accounts produced an income between about $36,000 and $97,000, according to Kennedy's form. Arctic Royalty has been registered as a business entity in numerous states since 1985.

Overall, however, his Arctic Royalty earnings are a relatively small fraction of his overall income, which he reported at about $9 million.

When POLITICO asked about his earnings, Kennedy said he sold most of his stake in Arctic Royalty last December after his candidate financial disclosure form became public. He did not share documentation confirming the sale.

“I sold all my stake in this company in December. I still indirectly own a very small interest in Arctic Royalty through my brother David's estate. It generates approximately $1,000 per year. I own 1/10 of that estate. Because other family members are also owners, I have no power to sell off this investment,” he said in a statement.

On the campaign trail, Kennedy has centered his career as an environmental activist and anti-pollution litigator. He also criticized the Biden administration’s handling of the East Palestine cleanup in a campaign video, saying if he was president that "everybody involved, the corporate officials and the regulatory officials, would be held accountable, both criminally and civilly."

As a candidate, Kennedy pledged to ban fracking last fall as part of a 10-point plan to “fix” plastics pollution. But four days later, he walked it back. The campaign said he wouldn’t ban fracking because that would harm the U.S. economy but instead would support “a gradual phase-out of the practice, starting with the removal of subsidies and a moratorium on new exploration,” in a statement to Fox News.

“Arctic Royalty was a legacy investment that my grandfather Joseph Kennedy made in the early 1950s. The stock is held by a Kennedy family partnership in which I inherited a small stake due to its inclusion in my grandfather’s 1957 trust instrument. The company does not do any drilling. It owns mineral rights and pays out royalties from companies that are exploiting oil reserves,” Kennedy said.

The Office of Government Ethics requires that candidates who own oil and gas companies specifically disclose the names of the companies leasing the land and its locations.

Kennedy, however, did not detail the companies that lease land for oil and gas procurement from Arctic Royalty in his financial disclosures. But his cousin, Caroline Kennedy, who filed the same report to become ambassador to Australia, did.

The complete and transparent disclosure of a candidate’s financial investments and holdings is a vital part of the public vetting process, experts say.

“It’s really important for candidates to disclose their financial interests to voters because voters are deciding whether to entrust these people with an incredible amount of power,” said Delaney Marsco, senior legal counsel for ethics at the Campaign Legal Center. “The public has a right to know that these people are going to be acting in the public’s best interest and not in the interest of someone who used to pay them a lot of money to drill on their land, or used to pay their salary, or be a client of theirs.”

The OGE guidelines have specific rules for oil and gas rights leasing companies, which say that Robert Kennedy should have included in his own disclosure a similar list breaking down the companies that leased land from Arctic Royalty LP.

“You would expect to see it reported in the way that the ambassador reports it just based on what OGE guidance says,” Marsco said. “Not to say that it was an intentional omission, that you know, he was trying to hide something because clearly, it'd be very hard to hide it because it literally exists exactly in somebody else's report.”

Caroline Kennedy’s disclosure, which was also filed in 2023, reported that Arctic Royalty works with fossil fuel companies that have been fined for polluting by the EPA, Justice Department and state regulatory bodies as well as at least one other company that was served a notice of a potential violation.

Arctic Royalty also leases land to a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum Corp., according to the latest available county appraisal property filings in Yoakum County, Texas. The chemical arm of Occidental Petroleum was transporting its products on the train that derailed in East Palestine, Ohio.

The chemical subsidiary is also a member organization of a lobbying group that weighed in on the Railway Safety Act of 2023, introduced by Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), which did not become law.

And the Occidental Chemical Corporation president is on the board of another lobbying group that argued against the Railway Safety Act. The American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers wrote in a letter to Senate leaders that while it agreed with the “legislative intent,” it opposed reforms not directly related to the cause of that specific train derailment. This included opposing an accelerated phase-out of the tank car fleet.

Occidental Petroleum also reported lobbying the government on a variety of issues, including rail safety, rail customer service, tank car safety and oil vessels, according to public lobbying reports from 2023.

Occidental did not respond to a request for comment. Kennedy said he could not find records of Arctic Royalty leasing land to Occidental, but the county records available online show a relationship dating back to 2013. Arctic Royalty could not be reached for comment.

Kennedy has used the East Palestine train derailment to highlight his background as an environmental activist who has a record of legally holding polluters accountable. He’s also used it to draw a contrast between himself and President Joe Biden, including making a campaign video that explains how his response would differ if he was in office now.

Kennedy did not mention in the campaign video about East Palestine that he received revenue from Arctic Royalty, which does business with the Occidental Petroleum’s subsidiary.

Kennedy, who was a professor and supervising attorney at Pace University School of Law's Environmental Litigation Clinic, often talks about the negative impacts of pollution in interviews and at campaign rallies, typically framing pollution as a market externality for which companies should be held financially responsible. He has a long history of making this argument.

“What polluters do is they make themselves rich by making everybody else poor. They raise standards of living for themselves by lowering the quality of life for everybody else. And they do that by escaping the discipline of the free market,” Kennedy said at a climate forum in 2011. “You show me a polluter, I’ll show you a subsidy.”

Kennedy was also a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council and was in leadership roles at both Waterkeeper Alliance and Riverkeeper, two nonprofits focused on suing polluters, at the time he made that comment.

His dedication to the environment and nature is not only core to his brand as a candidate but has also been deployed in campaign fundraising. Earlier this year, Kennedy auctioned off the chance to go on a falconry trip with him and a whale watching trip in Hawaii with him and his wife, actress Cheryl Hines.

Waterkeeper Alliance communications director Lori Harrison said Waterkeeper would not comment on Kennedy and declined to answer questions about whether the organization knew the oil and gas leasing company was part of his family trust while he worked there.

Kennedy reported receiving income from a benefit plan from NRDC on his candidate financial disclosure. The organization did not respond to a question about the oil and gas leasing company, but confirmed Kennedy draws a pension.

“Sound science is foundational to NRDC’s work to protect the environment and public health. Mr. Kennedy has not worked here since 2015, though he does draw a pension from his time as an employee,” said NRDC national media director Josh Mogerman in a statement.

The NRDC Action Fund, an affiliated 501(c)(4) organization, has endorsed Biden in the 2024 election.