Robert F Kennedy Jr names tech lawyer Nicole Shanahan as 2024 running mate

Robert F Kennedy Jr selected Nicole Shanahan, a tech attorney and wealthy philanthropist, as his running mate in an independent campaign that could upset the 2024 race for the White House.

Kennedy, an environmental attorney who gained notoriety as a vaccine sceptic and conspiracy theorist, announced his pick at a campaign event on Tuesday in Oakland, California, where Shanahan was born.

In a nearly hour-long, winding speech, Kennedy cited Shanahan’s career in technology as an asset for the campaign, Kennedy said she had “deep inside knowledge of how big tech uses AI to manipulate” voters.

Shanahan was the founder and CEO of the Palo Alto legal tech firm ClearAccessIP before selling the company in 2020. She was also a fellow at Stanford Law School’s center for legal informatics.

“I managed to put a technologist at the forefront,” Kennedy said. “I found a vice-president who shares my indignation about the participation of big tech as a partner in the censorship, surveillance, and the information warfare that our government is currently waging against the American people.”

Kennedy, 70, a scion of the US political dynasty that includes former president John F Kennedy, also presented Shanahan, 38, as a fresh and youthful voice in a presidential contest between 81-year-old Joe Biden and 77-year-old Donald Trump.

“There’s a growing number of millennials and gen Z Americans who have lost faith in their future and lost their pride in our country,” he said.

The announcement event took place in the Henry J Kaiser Center for the Arts, a historic building in Oakland that has been in disrepair for decades but is on the path to being reopened. Speaking at the event, rightwing author Angela Stanton-King said the venue had been opened to the