Wall Street executive backs RFK Jr.’s anti-vaccine group

A veteran Wall Street executive told CNBC that he has been helping bankroll Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s anti-vaccine group and has turn into a casual advisor to the organization.

Mark Gorton, founder and chairman of high-frequency trading firm Tower Research Capital, said he has given $1 million to the anti-vaccine nonprofit organization called Kid’s Health Defense since 2021.

Kennedy, a longtime vaccine critic and a son of late senator and U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, founded Kid’s Health Defense. The younger Kennedy was also chairman of the group’s board before he launched his run for president as a Democrat in April.

While President Joe Biden is the clear favorite to win the 2024 Democratic nomination, Kennedy has drawn a surprising amount of support, with a recent Fox News survey showing that 19% of the Democratic primary voters surveyed would back him in the first.

Polls also show that Kennedy’s rise in influence coincides with a rise in skepticism about vaccines, despite scientific evidence that the shots are secure. Kennedy has attracted support from some longtime political players, including former Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who’s running the campaign. Michael Flynn, former President Donald Trump’s national security advisor, was reportedly pictured with Kennedy in 2021, based on ABC News.

During an almost 90-minute interview at Cafe Fiorello in Recent York, Gorton said he’s cheering on Kennedy’s campaign for president and has repeatedly met with him since he donated to Kid’s Health Defense.

“I like him quite a bit. He’s an excellent smart guy. Again, he’s probably not a politician. He’s a corruption fighter,” Gorton said, adding that he has Kennedy’s mobile phone number.

Asked about Gorton’s donation, a spokeswoman for the Kid’s Health Defense said in an email, “CHD’s donor information is confidential and only communicated to the IRS in compliance with their rules/regulations.”

A Kennedy campaign spokesperson didn’t return requests for comment before publication.

The Associated Press reported that Kid’s Health Defense played a key role in pushing back on Covid vaccines and helped elevate Kennedy’s profile. The nonprofit’s most up-to-date publicly available tax documents show that it raised just over $6 million in 2020, the 12 months the Covid pandemic began, greater than double what it raised a 12 months earlier.

The organization sent CNBC its tax documents from 2021, which show the group raised just over $15 million that 12 months. It went into 2022 with over $11 million in assets. The documents don’t name the group’s donors.

Beyond his donation, Gorton said he’s been talking to the nonprofit’s staff through Zoom calls, and advising the group on its messaging strategy. “I mainly have been working with them to attempt to develop a technique to go after the core of the beast which is the pharmaceutical industry,” he said.

Federal Election Commission records show that Gorton donated $500,000 last 12 months to an excellent PAC that was then called the People Pharma’s Movement and run by other Kennedy allies. That PAC rebranded as American Values 2024 and has spent over $200,000 in print ads backing Kennedy’s candidacy, based on FEC records.

Gorton said he has no current plans to donate to the PAC this cycle. “I do not think it’s an excellent high-leverage thing for me to do. Now that it’s supporting Bobby Kennedy, you are within the realm of presidential races where billions of dollars are spent and I do not think I could make any difference at that scale,” Gorton said.

Kennedy has linked vaccines to autism. That has been debunked by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, and the American Academy of Pediatrics. Gorton, through his Substack, has pushed his own takes on Covid vaccines. Identical to Kennedy, he questions the trustworthiness of those federal and global medical agencies.

Gorton, who also founded LimeWire, a peer-to-peer online content creator, has dabbled in other conspiracy theories.

Gawker reported in 2014 that Gorton wrote essays featuring quite a lot of conspiracies, including the concept that former President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 as a part of a “full scale coup d’état.” President Kennedy was an uncle of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has pushed a similar conspiracy that the Central Intelligence Agency was behind the assassination.

The CIA has continued to disclaim involvement within the assassination.

Gorton told CNBC he continues to face by most of what he wrote in those essays.