Donald Trump’s pick for health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr once labelled the agency responsible for vaccine rollouts in the US a “fascist” enterprise and accused it of knowingly hurting children.

Mr Kennedy, a vaccine sceptic, also compared what he saw as a widespread conspiracy to hide harms from the US’ child vaccination programme to the cover-up of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.

The comments were made from 2013 onwards to private audiences of AutismOne, a conference for parents of autistic children. Recordings of the remarks have recently been shared with NBC News, the US sister network of Sky News.

In other comments, he also claimed that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was a “cesspool of corruption”, filled with profiteers, and was harming children in a way he likened to “Nazi death camps”.

Mr Kennedy, the son of the late Robert Kennedy and nephew of the late former president John F Kennedy, is poised to run the US Health Department when president-elect Mr Trump enters the White House in January.

In previously unreported comments from 2019, Mr Kennedy compared the CDC and its vaccine programme to “fascism”.

“The word ‘fascism’ in Italian means a bundle of sticks, and what it means is the bundle is more important than the sticks,” he said.

“The institution, CDC and the vaccine programme is more important than the children that it’s supposed to protect.

“It’s the same reason we had a paedophile scandal in the Catholic Church,” he added.

“Because people were able to convince themselves that the institution, the church, was more important than these little boys and girls who were being raped. And everybody kept their mouth shut.

“The press, the prosecutors, the priests, the bishops, the Vatican, and even the parents of the kids who just didn’t want to believe it was happening, or believed so much in the church they were unwilling to criticise it.

“And you know, that is the perfect metaphor for what’s happening to us.”

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In comments made in 2013 at AutismOne, he criticised a group of experts, including vaccine scientists, involved in what he falsely claimed was a conspiracy to hide vaccines as the cause of autism.

Links between autism and vaccines, which originate from a discredited and fraudulent research paper, have long been debunked and been described as “perhaps, the most damaging medical hoax of the last 100 years”.

Mr Kennedy also said vaccine scientists “should be in jail and the key should be thrown away”.

At the 2013 AutismOne conference question-and-answer session, when asked about the CDC’s motives for failing to acknowledge autism as an epidemic, Mr Kennedy made a comparison to the Holocaust.

“To me, this is like Nazi death camps, what happened to these kids,” he said.

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Mr Kennedy said of the rising number of children diagnosed with autism and what he described as a link to vaccines: “I can’t tell you why somebody would do something like that. I can’t tell you why ordinary Germans participated in the Holocaust.”

Over the weekend, Mr Trump picked former congressman Dr Dave Weldon to lead the CDC.

Dr Weldon has also spoken at AutismOne conferences and in remarks made in 2004 suggested vaccines caused neurological problems and said parents of autistic children were “the 900-pound gorilla that has not had its voice heard adequately on Capitol Hill”.

Mr Kennedy and the Trump transition team did not respond to requests for comment when asked by NBC. The CDC also declined to comment.

A man has been charged with threatening to kill Donald Trump.

Authorities arrested Manuel Tamayo-Torres on Monday in southern California.

He is accused of posting videos on social media threatening to kill the president-elect, according to court documents.

In one video, posted on 13 November, Tamayo-Torres threatened to shoot the 78-year-old while holding what authorities said appeared to be an AR-15 style rifle.

Among the other videos he posted, one was from an area in Glendale, Arizona, on 23 August, the same day Mr Trump held a rally there, court papers said.

The videos, posted on a “near-daily basis”, accuse Mr Trump and his family of kidnapping and sex-trafficking, Sky News’ US partner NBC News reports.

In a video posted on 21 November, Tamayo-Torres said Mr Trump’s “whole family is going to die”, the outlet said.

It added that he’d said: “You’re Caucasian nothing. You’ll earn nothing. Aryan money, that’s all you have.

“You’re a low-life scum. I’ll spit in your f****** face motherf*****, and if they give me a chance, I’m going to f****** bury you myself.”

He was charged with one count of making threats against the president-elect and four counts of making false statements during the purchase of a firearm, NBC News said.

It comes as “several” members of Mr Trump’s incoming cabinet were targeted with bomb threats, the transition team said.

The threats were made on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning and they ranged from bomb threats to “swatting” – which is when a false crime is reported to bring an armed police response to someone’s home.

Spokesperson for Mr Trump, Karoline Leavitt said: “Last night and this morning, several of President Trump’s cabinet nominees and administration appointees were targeted in violent, unAmerican threats to their lives and those who live with them.”

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The FBI said it was aware of “numerous bomb threats and swatting incidents” targeting Mr Trump’s cabinet and administration nominees and was working with its law enforcement partners.

The threats come months after Mr Trump’s ear was grazed by gunfire during an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania in July, which killed a spectator and left two others seriously injured.

In September a man was charged with attempted assassination after allegedly positioning himself with a rifle outside one of Mr Trump’s golf courses in Florida as he played a round.

Several people nominated to roles in Donald Trump’s incoming cabinet and administration have been targeted by bomb threats and “swatting,” a spokesperson for the US president-elect has said.

The threats were made on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning and law enforcement acted quickly to ensure the safety of those targeted, Karoline Leavitt said.

In a statement, she said the incidents “ranged from bomb threats to ‘swatting'”, which is when a false crime is reported to bring an armed police response to someone’s home.

The statement said: “Last night and this morning, several of President Trump’s cabinet nominees and administration appointees were targeted in violent, unAmerican threats to their lives and those who live with them.”

Ms Leavitt added: “With President Trump as our example, dangerous acts of intimidation and violence will not deter us.”

Elise Stefanik, who represents New York in the House and has been picked by Mr Trump to serve as US ambassador to the United Nations, said her family home had been the target of a bomb threat.

In a statement she said she, her husband and their three-year-old son were driving from Washington DC to Saratoga County in New York for Thanksgiving when they were informed of the threat, with police responding “immediately with the highest levels of professionalism”.

Three senior law enforcement officials briefed on the swatting incident told Sky’s US partner network NBC News the threats were “not credible” and no devices or physical threats were found.

They did not involve VIPs protected by the US Secret Service such as Mr Trump or his vice president-elect JD Vance.

The FBI said it was aware of “numerous bomb threats and swatting incidents” targeting Mr Trump’s cabinet and administration nominees and was working with its law enforcement partners.

In a statement it said: “We take all potential threats seriously and, as always, encourage members of the public to immediately report anything they consider suspicious to law enforcement.”

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Threats follow assassination attempt

Mr Trump has been announcing his picks for his cabinet and other high-ranking positions in his administration since his election victory on 5 November.

The threats come months after Mr Trump suffered a wound to his ear during an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania in July, which killed a spectator and left two others seriously injured.

In September a man was charged with attempted assassination after allegedly positioning himself with a rifle outside one of Mr Trump’s golf courses in Florida as Mr Trump played golf.

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