ALBANY, N.Y. — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. faced hours of heated questioning Tuesday in a case accusing him of lying about his New York residency in order to get on the state’s presidential ballot.
The independent presidential candidate testified in the lawsuit brought by the President Biden-aligned Clear Choice PAC, which is seeking to overturn Kennedy’s Empire State nominating petition on the grounds he fibbed about his residence while actually living in California.
Keith Corbett, an attorney for the super PAC, confronted Kennedy in Albany Supreme Court with a July 2 sworn affidavit saying his driver’s license was registered at his residence in the New York City suburb of Katonah. But Corbett claimed state motor vehicle records didn’t show the license registered at that address until the next day.
“You are familiar with the term ‘perjury’?” Corbett asked, seemingly in an attempt to paint the discrepancy as a smoking gun.
“Of course I am,” replied Kennedy, 70, clad in a dark blue suit, light blue dress shirt and a dark blue narrow tie.
He tried to downplay the apparent inconsistency, saying that what he swore to in the affidavit was “what I believed at the time.”
“This is the first time I’m hearing there was a mistake,” he said. “I was wrong by 24 hours.”
Corbett aggressively continued to press Kennedy, prompting Judge Christina Ryba to sustain an objection over the attorney’s “badgering.”
Corbett also pulled up New York Board of Elections records showing Kennedy’s residency was at his sister Kerry Kennedy’s Bedford Corners home in Westchester County when he voted in 2016, 2018 and 2020 — despite the deed showing his sibling sold the house in 2015.
Kennedy said he moved around 13 times in the Bedford Corners and Mount Kisco area from 2016 through 2020 and didn’t think he needed to update his residence every time since his polling location would be the same.
“I don’t think that’s illegal,” Kennedy said.
But Corbett implied it was when he asked, “Are you familiar with the term voter fraud?”
“I’m familiar with the term. I don’t know what I did was voter fraud,” Kennedy answered.
Kennedy has a home in Los Angeles where he lives with his actress wife Cheryl Hines, who starred in HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”
But his lawyers have argued in court papers that Kennedy only temporarily moved his family to the West Coast for his wife’s career and that he “is and always has been a New Yorker.”
Democrats are trying to boot Kennedy off the ballot to remove any possibility that he could be a spoiler in Donald Trump’s favor.
By proving Kennedy held residency in California, he and his running mate – Nicole Shanahan – would forfeit the Golden State’s 54 electoral college votes.
A constitutional quirk prevents a presidential ticket of two candidates from the same state from winning electoral college votes from that state.
The bench trial will be decided by the judge, rather than a jury.
The candidate is slated to continue testifying Wednesday morning and was instructed by the judge not to speak about the case until he’s wrapped.
