Robert Kennedy Jr. ‘Absolutely Tried to Silence Me’: Blogger Sued by HHS Secretary Speaks Out
David Vickrey spoke with Important Context about the legal battle that consumed the last five years of his life.
David Vickrey was not a professional journalist when, as he put it, Robert Kennedy Jr. “absolutely tried to silence” him. He was a retiree, a grandfather, and a regular blogger on the liberal website The Daily Kos where he had written hundreds of posts over the span of two decades under the pseudonym DowneastDem. But a post he’d written in August 2020 would put him in the crosshairs of the notorious anti-vaccine activist.
It was the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and like millions of Americans, public health was on Vickrey’s mind. Fluent in both English and German, he was a regular reader of the German news magazine Der Spiegel, which he read online. That August, an article caught his eye: Kennedy, the failson of a Democratic political dynasty and long-time anti-vaccine activist, had spoken at a protest in Berlin against the country’s COVID mitigation measures that had been organized by, and featured elements of, the German far-Right.
The day before, Kennedy had hosted a press conference announcing the launch of a European branch of his well-funded and lucrative anti-vaccine organization, Children’s Health Defense, joined by members of far-right and anti-vaccine groups.
Vickrey took to his DowneastDem blog to write up a post summarizing the Der Spiegel story in English. Titled “Anti-Vaxxer RFK JR. joins neo-Nazis in massive Berlin ‘Anti-Corona’ Protest,” Vickrey’s piece noted that the rally “was organized by right-wing extremist organizations including the AfD party and various anti-Semitic conspiracy groups as well as the neo-Nazi NPD party.” (Daily Kos blog posts are not reviewed by the site’s editors prior to publication.)
Other outlets, including the BBC, reported on Kennedy’s involvement in the rally, and Vickrey’s post was not widely shared. Nevertheless, the anti-vaccine activist, who has long sought to position himself as a champion of free speech, singled out the retiree blogger, embarking on what can only be described as a legal crusade against him, aiming to pressure him into retracting his post.
That crusade, which finally came to an end in September, would eat up five years of Vickrey’s life and include multiple lawsuit filings in multiple states.
“It was awful,” Vickrey said. “I mean, I was just angry, but my wife, my family, was afraid that he was asking for millions of dollars in damages. And who knows, you know? He could have gotten a MAGA judge that would say, ‘Yeah, let’s go after this guy.’”
Vickrey described Kennedy’s legal pursuit of him as “a message for anyone else,” but noted, “I don’t think it stopped anyone. If you go online, there’s so many things written about him—which are also coming from his own family—which are much worse than anything that I ever said.”
In November 2020, Kennedy sued The Daily Kos seeking to obtain DowneastDem’s identity in New York and California. The legal attempt to unmask Vickrey alarmed organizations like the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and Public Citizen, but Kennedy was relentless. Upon finding out Vickrey’s identity, reportedly through his own investigations (Children’s Health Defense would credit its “sleuthing”), Kennedy launched a defamation suit against him seeking, at minimum, $1 million in damages.
Children’s Health Defense provided financial help for the suit—something the organization noted in its coverage of the lawsuit on their own blog “The Defender.” Kennedy stepped down from his position as Children’s Health Defense’s president in late 2024 in preparation for his Senate confirmation hearings for his health secretary nomination, though his legal battle with Vickery continued as he assumed office.
Originally, in the fall of 2023, Kennedy filed in state court in New Hampshire where Vickery had previously worked, despite the blogger being based in Maine. New Hampshire notably does not have a law protecting its residents against strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPP). Maine, on the other hand, does have an anti-SLAPP statute. The New Hampshire case was ultimately dismissed on jurisdictional grounds last January after being removed to federal court, and Kennedy subsequently refiled with an amended complaint in Maine that October.
“I wrote the five sentence blog in like two minutes in August of 2020, and he claimed I wrote it to derail his presidential campaign in New Hampshire, even though he didn’t declare until three years later,” Vickrey said.
In his legal filings, Kennedy did not dispute the central premise of Vickrey’s blog post that he had appeared onstage with groups linked to neo-Nazis. Rather, his lawyers argued that the post was libelous because Kennedy had not become a member of those groups—something the blogger never claimed. Kennedy also argued that Vickrey had made other defamatory statements about him because he had posted links to articles about him on social media without additional comment.
Despite the questionable merits of the suit, Vickrey said Kennedy’s legal campaign was a constant stress on him and his family. “It was scary,” he said. “All of a sudden, out of nowhere, this powerful guy files a lawsuit against you. You never know, right?”
Vickrey said he had even reached out to his senator, Republican Susan Collins, who sat on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, ahead of Kennedy’s confirmation hearings to inform her of the situation and ask for her to reject his nomination. Collins voted to advance and later confirm the anti-vaxxer anyway.
Vickrey called his confirmation “sickening,” “awful,” and “a tragedy for the nation.”
Luckily, Vickrey, told Important Context, he had an insurance policy that covered him in the event of a defamation lawsuit. That insurance ended up paying out to cover his legal fees. In the U.S., there is no right to an attorney in civil suits and even frivolous lawsuits can end up costing winning defendants big money upfront, especially if the plaintiff is well-resourced. As there are few avenues for recourse for defendants against bad faith or doomed legal campaigns, plaintiffs will file with the ultimate goal of obtaining an out-of-court settlement. Sanctions against attorneys are seldom asked for and even less frequently imposed and recovery of legal fees is not a guarantee.
President Trump has filed multiple dubious defamation lawsuits against media companies—seemingly to extract settlements, as it is difficult for public figure plaintiffs to win such suits. They have to show the defendant acted with “actual malice” under the precedent set in the Supreme Court case of New York Times v. Sullivan (1964)—a higher bar aimed at protecting open discourse which Trump has repeatedly expressed his desire to eliminate. Two right-wing Supreme Court Justices have also expressed openness to reviewing the standard.
In 2024, the president filed a $20 billion suit against CBS over what he claimed was a deceptively edited ‘60 Minutes’ interview with his presidential rival, Democrat Kamala Harris. The suit ultimately settled for $16 million with observers noting that at the time, CBS’s parent company, Paramount, was in the process of merging with Skydance Media and needed approval from the Federal Communications Commission. Trump also The Wall Street Journal and has recently threatened to sue the BBC for up to $5 billion.
Vickrey noted the cases brought by Trump, explaining that when it came to the media outlets, “They can fight” because the cases will “be tossed eventually,” adding, “But guys like me, we don’t have those resources, right?” He noted that Kennedy’s case against him had been brought as “a nuisance.” As The Daily Beast reported, Kennedy did come to him with a settlement offer before the court handed down its ruling.
“Towards the end, I think he realized the futility of the whole case and said, ‘Okay, I’ll drop the case if you retract everything you said and delete every post that you ever made,’” Vickrey told Important Context. “We said, basically, you know, ‘Go pound sand, we’re not going to do that.’”
On September 10, the court handed down its decision granting Vickrey summary judgment. Children’s Health Defense has not posted anything about the defeat.