‘A really strange person’: Democrats investigate RFK’s running mate

Allies of President Joe Biden are digging into the complicated personal life of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s running mate, Nicole Shanahan, as they eye the possibility that Kennedy’s campaign could pull votes from Biden and spoil his campaign.

The former Clinton aide James Carville has placed calls in recent weeks to prominent Silicon Valley figures about Shanahan. The inquiries have focused on Shanahan’s two marriages, long the subject of interest in Silicon Valley. Her 2023 divorce from co-founder Sergey Brin left her with the money to help finance Kennedy’s campaign.

“The tech industry is like Hollywood and there’s all sorts of stuff floating around out there,” Carville said in a brief telephone interview. I would be totally stunned if she wasn’t a really strange person in the eyes of most people.” (Carville also said he believes Kennedy is more of a threat to Trump than to Biden, contrary to Democratic concerns.)

Carville is a consultant to the SuperPAC American Bridge, whose president, Pat Dennis, called the inquiries part of “a vetting process that the American people expect.” Dennis, in a statement, called into question Kennedy’s behavior, including his belief in conspiracy theories. “We’re not going to let his running mate Nicole Shanahan get away with shady behavior or anti-science conspiracy theories, either,” he said. “Anyone challenging the president in November should be vetted,” he said. He said the organization is also interested in her views on issues, not solely her marital history.

Shahanan, who met Brin in 2014, the year she graduated law school, founded the patent analytics company ClearAccessIP, which was acquired in 2020 by IPwe for an undisclosed sum. In 2018, she made a $6 million gift to start the Buck Institute for Female Reproductive Longevity and Equality. She told People Magazine that she started a venture capital firm, Planeta Ventures, that invests in climate-related startups like alternative vegetable oil company Zero Acre.

But she’s also lived in a Silicon Valley bubble in which the super-rich lead unconventional lives, but typically avoid the intense and often painful scrutiny that entertainers, athletes and politicians endure. Her step onto the public stage — she could, in theory, become president of the United States in less than a year — has turned old Silicon Valley gossip into the subject of opposition research.

American Bridge says it is looking into a wide swath of her past, but didn’t share details about their sources, methods or much in the way of specifics.

Carville was plumbing a deep well of Silicon Valley gossip, some of which has spilled occasionally into the tabloids. Much of it focuses on 2014, when Shanahan married a low-profile investor named Jeremy Kranz. Kranz filed for an annulment within weeks of their wedding, but ultimately agreed to a standard dissolution because it would have jeopardized Shanahan’s standing on the California Bar. She reportedly met Brin the same year.

The episode that Shanahan is most known for — other than running for vice president — is a 2022 Wall Street Journal report alleging she had an affair with Elon Musk and that the tryst caused a falling out between Musk and Brin. Both Musk and Shanahan have denied the account. Her divorce with Brin was finalized the next year.

A spokesperson for the Kennedy-Shanahan campaign directed questions about the ticket to their website.

“I’m not a public person. I speak to the public on issues related to my work, and ideas that I’ve given my time to studying. The article and its aftermath have been a disaster for my work life, my reputation, and my ability to communicate the things I care most deeply about,” Shanahan wrote in People before deciding to run for office. “A university where I had just given a lecture on the subject of who should own the intellectual property rights of works generated by Artificial Intelligence removed the video from the internet for fear of harassment. Speaking engagements dried up, one woman claiming she had to defend me in front of a host committee that felt uncomfortable about my representation at the conference.”

“Friends just hope she knows what’s coming,” Puck reported in a recent profile of Shanahan.

A New York Kennedy campaign official drew Democratic attention recently by saying her top goal was to “get rid of Biden.”

Silicon Valley’s culture has begun to be the target of investigative reporting: “The world’s wealthiest person has used LSD, cocaine, ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms, often at private parties around the world, where attendees sign nondisclosure agreements or give up their phones to enter,” the Wall Street Journal wrote in a recent glimpse at the culture of the tech elite.