'We'll see who wins': Trump nominee reportedly sparks power struggle by cashing in favor
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is looking to cash in a favor with Donald Trump to help prove a conspiracy theory about his uncle's assassination.
The president-elect nominated Kennedy to oversee public health after Kennedy dropped his own long-shot bid for president and endorsed the Republican nominee, and now the political scion is pushing to get his daughter-in-law Amaryllis Fox Kennedy as deputy director of the CIA, which he believes had a role in the 1963 killing of president John F. Kennedy.
"RFK has become really one of the inner circle with Donald Trump," reported CNN's Kristen Holmes from Mar-a-Lago. "So it is also unsurprising that this seems to be working, that she has sat down with both Trump and [CIA director nominee] John Ratcliffe. Now some of the things that we know about her, other than the fact that she ran her father-in-law's campaign, is that she is a former CIA official, there had been some concerns among members of the CIA that John Ratcliffe didn't have enough experience."
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"But I do want to caveat this," Holmes added. "We are still looking into her time at the CIA. It's unclear how exactly she would play into this model of being a former CIA official, whether or not she was a rank-and-file member, etc. The other thing to point out is that because she's a Kennedy, there is some belief among the more MAGA disrupter crowd that she herself would be a disrupter, which is something that John Ratcliffe is not considered – they wanted to mix it up a little bit."
Kennedy wants to place his daughter-in-law at the agency to help get to the bottom of his uncle's assassination, according to two GOP sources, but Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), who is expected to take over as chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and former members of the intelligence community are opposed to that move.
"One of the other very fascinating components of all of this is the fact that RFK Jr. has long said that he believes that the CIA was involved in the assassination of his uncle, president John F. Kennedy," Holmes reported. "Donald Trump, while he was on the campaign trail, said that he would release any other files on that investigation as soon as he was elected president. Obviously, he's been elected president, so we'll see how that goes."
"Now, not everybody is thrilled with this idea of Amaryllis Fox Kennedy," Holmes added. "Tom Cotton, who's going to chair the Senate committee, intelligence committee, obviously, a very big position. He apparently behind the scenes has been pushing back, talking to Trump directly about this. We'll see who wins in the battle of pushing back in Trump ally land, whether it's RFK Jr. or Tom Cotton."