"WAIT!! Did JFK Jr. warn us that Joe Biden was a traitor to America before he was killed!?" says a March 18, 2025 post on X from Brand, an actor-turned-conservative influencer who has previously amplified disinformation, including on his conspiracy-laden YouTube channel.
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Screenshot from X taken March 25, 2025
The post followed the release President Donald Trump ordered of thousands of records relating to the 1963 assassination of former president Kennedy, which are now available via the US National Archives.
Similar messages -- including from conservative influencers such as David Harris Jr -- cropped up across X and other platforms, including Facebook.
Accompanying the posts is an image of a partially redacted FBI document from September 1994. The document describes a letter sent to then-Senator Biden that said: "Dear Sen. Biden: You are a traitor..." The note bore a signature that said, "John F. Kennedy Jr."
The younger Kennedy, who died in 1999 when a plane he was piloting crashed in the Atlantic Ocean, is a star figure among supporters of the baseless QAnon conspiracy theory, some of whom have claimed he is secretly alive and leading their movement or working hand-in-hand with Trump.
But there is no evidence he authored the letter to Biden described in FBI records.
"Absolutely it is a hoax," said Steven Gillon, a professor of history at the University of Oklahoma and the author of a biography about the younger Kennedy (archived here). "John never wrote that letter. But that does not stop the conspiracy nuts from waving it around to undermine Biden's credibility."
The documents in question are also not new; they became public in 2000 as a result of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request made by the Associated Press (archived here and here).
Cased closed with no suspect
The image Brand and others have circulated online shows one of more than 25 pages detailing the death threat against Biden, who is repeatedly listed as a "victim."
The files outline how Biden received a letter in 1994 that was postmarked from the state of Massachusetts and said, in part: "You must die." It was signed: "John F. Kennedy Jr."
The FBI briefly investigated the matter, compiling fingerprints and other evidence. But the case was closed after just a few months, with no suspect identified, according to the records. The documents refer to the mail throughout as an "anonymous letter file" and use the term "unsub" -- shorthand in law enforcement for an unknown subject -- to refer to the suspect.
Gillon said the letter was included in a tranche of other FBI materials that he obtained through a FOIA request in 2017, most of which was related to assassination attempts against former president Kennedy's son.
"Apparently someone pretending to be John wrote that note," he told AFP in a March 25, 2025 email. "John never called Biden a traitor."
"The letter has as much credibility as claims that John was going to come back from the dead and serve as Trump's running mate," he added, referring to beliefs some QAnon adherents held before Trump successfully ran to retake the presidency in 2024 with J.D. Vance sharing his ticket.
Gillon said the hoax may have been designed to hurt Kennedy "by injecting him into the world of partisan politics, which is something he assiduously avoided."
The letter has fueled conspiracy theories online for years. The US fact-checking organization PolitiFact in 2020 debunked false claims about Biden plotting to kidnap Kennedy that stemmed from the same trove of FBI records.
AFP has debunked other misinformation about US politics here.