Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is under investigation for collecting dead whales

GLENDALE, AZ — A federal law enforcement agency confirmed it has launched an investigation into Robert F. Kennedy Jr. after he allegedly cut off the head of a dead whale and took it home two decades ago.

The former independent presidential candidate announced the investigation on Saturday while campaigning for Donald Trump outside Phoenix.

Kennedy's daughter recalled the whale incident in a 2012 interview with Town and Country magazine that recently resurfaced and was widely shared on social media. Kathleen Kennedy said that when she was six years old, her father learned that a dead whale had washed ashore. He got a chainsaw, cut off the whale's head and strapped it to the roof of their minivan for the five-hour drive home.

“Every time we accelerated on the highway, whale juice would run into the windows of the car, and it was the most disgusting thing in the world,” Kathleen Kennedy recalls. “We all had plastic bags over our heads with holes cut in them for our mouths, and people on the highway would give us the middle finger, but that was just normal everyday life for us.”

A spokesman for the National Marine Fisheries Service confirmed Monday that agencies are investigating but declined to provide further details, citing a policy not to comment on ongoing investigations. The agency, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, enforces federal laws, including the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act.

Kennedy told a crowd of Trump supporters in Glendale, Arizona, that he had received a letter “saying I was under investigation for collecting a whale specimen 20 years ago.”

Kennedy did not confirm or deny that he took the severed whale head, but said the deadline to file charges had long passed. He suggested, without evidence, that the investigation was related to his support for Trump.

After his appearance, Kennedy repeatedly refused to answer reporters' questions about the investigation, saying the media only wanted to talk to him about “gossipy nonsense.”

“I have no interest in supporting that mainstream media view,” Kennedy said.

The whale carcass is the latest bizarre episode involving Kennedy and a dead animal.

Last month, Kennedy said he once rescued a bear that had been killed by a motorist and left it with a bicycle on top of it in New York's Central Park, reigniting a mystery that gripped the city a decade ago.