Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. once ate a dog — or so Vanity Fair wants you to believe.

The magazine printed a photo of Mr. Kennedy with an unidentified female hamming it up for the camera on a purported trip in Korea, pretending to bite into a cooked animal. Vanity Fair says a veterinarian identified the barbequed carcass as a canine. Mr. Kennedy says it was a goat and that the picture was taken in Patagonia. 

The allegation is just one shocking element in a 7,600-word article by Joe Hagan that could be best described as a hit piece. The article details Mr. Kennedy’s 14 years of heroin addiction, his sexual escapades, the suicide of his wife, his defense of Michael Skakel, and a new sexual assault accusation. 

“The DNC media’s garbage pail journalism may distract us from President Biden’s cognitive deficits but it does little to elevate the national debate,” Mr. Kennedy posted to X, defending himself against accusations in the article. 

Democrats seized on the dog-eating reports like it was Kristi Noem 2.0. The South Dakota Republican still hasn’t recovered from telling the world about her dog-killing escapades. 

“Here’s a photo of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. happily posing with a barbecued dog. New reporting in Vanity Fair reveals a friend has warned RFK Jr.’s campaign could cause him to ‘go down as one of the great villains in American history.’ I think that’s already happened,” a Democratic National Committee spokesperson, Matt Corridoni, posted to X with the image.

The timing of the article is notable, coming out one week after the presidential debate, from which the Biden campaign was hoping to get a bump. A glowing cover story about the first lady was published Monday in Vogue. 

Mr. Kennedy is a threat in key swing states that Mr. Biden needs to win to secure another term.

The rest of the article details other scandalous stories from Mr. Kennedy’s past, all told by friends and family of the Kennedy scion. Among these are details of Mr. Kennedy’s addiction to heroin, his philandering, his “problematic personality,” and what an unnamed old friend calls a “pathological need for attention.”

The article says that members of Mr. Kennedy’s family think “the source of these pathologies” — and by that the author means his conspiratorial thinking, his need for “public adulation,” and his white knight complex — all stem from his addiction and possible brain damage it caused.

Throughout the piece, Mr. Kennedy’s actions are framed in those terms. When Mr. Kennedy is censored by Meta for posting Covid “misinformation,” Mr. Hagan writes that Mr. Kennedy turned free speech into his new crusade.

“As one family member put it to me, blocking access to his social media audience was like ‘taking his stash,’” the article says.

Friends of Mr. Kennedy also say that he was a sex addict and that he sent them pictures of women’s private parts. The article insinuates Mr. Kennedy’s philandering is partially to blame for his ex-wife Mary Richardson’s suicide in 2012.  

It also highlights Mr. Kennedy’s belief that Sirhan Sirhan didn’t assassinate his father. It critically retells how Mr. Kennedy defended his cousin Michael Skakel, who served 11 years for the murder of Martha Moxley before his conviction was overturned in 2013. It frames these defenses as part of Mr. Kennedy’s conspiratorial mindset.

In introducing Mr. Kennedy’s vaccine skepticism and work with the Children’s Defense Fund, the author first mentions how Alex Jones, Glenn Beck, and Donald Trump “mainstreamed conspiracy culture.” The message is clear: Mr. Kennedy’s ideas are dangerous and not Democratic, despite his name.

The most damning story in the article comes from a former babysitter to Mr. Kennedy’s children, Eliza Cooney, who says he sexually assaulted her when she was living with the family at age 23. Ms. Cooney is now 48 and is making the allegations public for the first time.

She told Mr. Hagan that Mr. Kennedy groped her in the family’s kitchen, “putting his hands on her hips and sliding them up along her rib cage and breasts.” She says he also rubbed her leg once under a table. She says he also asked her once to rub lotion on his back.

“I am not a church boy,” Mr. Kennedy responded Tuesday. “I have so many skeletons in my closet that if they could all vote I could run for king of the world. … Vanity Fair is recycling 30-year-old stories, and I am not going to comment on the details of any of them.”

The Kennedy campaign did not immediately respond to the Sun’s request for comment on the sexual assault allegation and others.   

Few of Mr. Kennedy’s relatives spoke to Vanity Fair on the record. The author of the article calls on the Kennedy clan to break its silence.

“Rather than merely rubber-stamping Joe Biden’s already fatally faltering campaign, shouldn’t you be telling voters what you know about your brother and cousin, whose candidacy threatens to swing the presidential election to Donald Trump and upend American history forever?” the author asks.