WASHINGTON – Rick Stewart, a 74-year-old Libertarian running for Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District, picked up the phone on June 11 and started a recording.
On the other end was Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the United States Secretary of Health and Human Services, who told Stewart during a roughly 12-minute call that a Democratic takeover of the House would undermine what the Trump administration was trying to build, that Stewart could “make an agreement” that would accomplish more than a “symbolic run” for office, and that Kennedy could not go into specifics about what was on offer “because there’s legal prohibitions about that.” The Washington Post obtained the recording and published its contents Wednesday.
Stewart declined to leave the race. He kept the tape.
Government ethics lawyers who reviewed the audio said it raises serious concerns that Kennedy may have violated the Hatch Act, the federal statute restricting the use of official government positions for electoral purposes, or criminal statutes barring executive branch officials from interfering with elections. Kennedy identified himself explicitly on the call as a “liaison” for the White House, a description that, if accurate, would place his conduct squarely within the zone of restrictions that apply to senior executive branch officials acting in their official capacity.
The June 11 call to Stewart was at least Kennedy’s second to an Iowa congressional candidate this month. On June 8, three days earlier, Kennedy phoned Marco Battaglia, the Libertarian candidate in Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District. People familiar with that call said Kennedy warned Battaglia that Libertarian candidates in competitive races were the difference between Republicans keeping the House and losing it. Ten days after that call, Iowa’s State Objections Panel sustained Republican-filed challenges to Battaglia’s ballot qualifications, removing him from the November general election. Also removed were the Libertarian candidates for governor and lieutenant governor. The panel ruled June 16.
The sequence raised immediate questions about whether the pressure campaign and the legal challenges that followed it were coordinated. Kennedy’s Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to requests for comment on the calls or on what authority Kennedy was exercising when he made them. The White House offered no public statement on his role as a liaison or on who authorized the outreach.
The Hatch Act’s reach over Cabinet secretaries is at its broadest for conduct in their official capacity. Legal experts said three questions determine Kennedy’s exposure: whether the calls were made as part of his official duties or in a purely personal capacity; whether he implied or explicitly promised a specific government benefit in exchange for withdrawal; and what legal significance to assign to his own on-tape acknowledgment that he was constrained by “legal prohibitions” from spelling out what was available. That last phrase, several government ethics attorneys told the Post, suggests Kennedy was aware he was operating near a legal boundary.
Iowa’s House races carry real weight in November’s midterm arithmetic. Republicans hold the House by a margin thin enough that three or four lost seats would flip the chamber to Democratic control. Iowa’s 2nd and 3rd Districts appear on most competitive-seat lists; both were decided by fewer than five points in 2024. Senate Democrats have separately deployed election observers to 35 battleground states ahead of November as both parties maneuver over the rules governing who can vote and who appears on the ballot.
Stewart told the Post he understood Kennedy’s call as a proposal with a transactional structure. “He said he could help me if I left the race,” Stewart said in an interview, adding that he did not take Kennedy up on the offer. What form of help Kennedy described was not specified in Stewart’s account, and the recording, which Stewart shared with the Post but has not released in full, does not appear to capture Kennedy naming a specific benefit. That ambiguity is both the heart of the legal question and the limit of what the tape can prove on its own.
The Office of Special Counsel, an independent federal agency, handles Hatch Act enforcement and refers findings to the Merit Systems Protection Board or the Justice Department for action. Criminal prosecution of a sitting Cabinet secretary under election interference statutes would be unprecedented, but civil findings by the OSC have been issued against high-ranking executive officials before, including several Trump-era Cabinet and subcabinet members during his first term. Whether any formal complaint has been filed with the OSC was not publicly known as of Thursday. Congressional Democrats had not yet publicly responded to the Washington Post‘s reporting by Thursday afternoon.
Kennedy came to his Cabinet post from a political background that included an independent presidential run and extensive organizing outside the two-party structure. That history makes his intervention in the Iowa Libertarian races structurally notable: a former third-party candidate now working, by his own account, as an emissary for the Republican president, calling minor-party candidates and urging them to stand down in competitive districts where their presence most threatens Republican incumbents.
The calls achieved mixed results. Battaglia is off the ballot, though through a panel ruling on qualifications rather than a voluntary withdrawal. Stewart is still in the race, and still has the recording. What is unknown is what else Kennedy may have said in conversations that were not recorded, how many other candidates were contacted, and whether the calls were part of a broader coordinated strategy across multiple states where Libertarian candidates could affect tight House races.
The tape runs 12 minutes. Kennedy left the call without a commitment.
