RFK Jr admits to dumping bear carcass in New York's Central Park

Independent presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr has posted a video on social media in which he admits that he dumped a dead bear cub in New York City's Central Park in 2014.

The clip, posted to his X account on Sunday, shows him with controversial US comedian Roseanne Barr as he describes bizarre circumstances that led to an incident that mystified New Yorkers 10 years ago. Mr Kennedy said a woman had hit and killed the bear with her car when he was driving behind her outside of the city, and he put it in his van with the intention of skinning the animal and harvesting its meat.

It appears he shared the anecdote to get ahead of an upcoming story in The New Yorker magazine.

The Kennedy campaign and the New Yorker did not respond to requests for comment. Seated with rolled-up sleeves at a table covered with food, Mr Kennedy tells Ms Barr in the video that he was driving to meet a group of people to go falconing near Goshen, New York, 10 years ago when the bear was killed. He says he pulled over to put the bear in his vehicle.

"I was going to skin the bear - and it was in very good condition - and I was going to put the meat in my refrigerator," he says. "And you can do that in New York state: Get a bear tag for a roadkill bear."

New York state does allow people to take bears killed on roads, but the law stipulates that a person has to notify law enforcement or the state's Department of Environmental Conservation to acquire such a tag. Mr Kennedy does not appear to have done that.

Instead, he says he continued to his falconing venture, which went late into the evening. He says he went on to a dinner reservation he had at Peter Luger Steakhouse in New York City, about 75 miles (121km) south of Goshen. "At the end of the dinner, it was late and I realised I couldn't go home," Mr Kennedy says. "I had to go to the airport, and the bear was in my car, and I didn't want to leave the bear in my car because that would have been bad."

That is when, he says, it occurred to him that there had been a series of bicycle accidents in New York and that he had an old bicycle in his car.

He tells Ms Barr that he had the idea of staging a bike accident with the bear carcass in Central Park, which several drunk people with him heartily endorsed. He emphasises that he had not been drinking.

"So we did that and we thought it would be amusing for whoever found it or something," he says. "The next day... it was on every television station. It was a front page of every paper and I turned on the TV and there was like a mile of yellow tape and 20 cop cars, there were helicopters flying, and I was like, 'Oh my god. What did I do?'"