Kennedy's filing reports $4 million in book advances

Disclosure lists more than $250,000 in gifts from de Becker

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s latest financial disclosure, signed by a Health and Human Services ethics official on September 17 and obtained by NPR, shows he received $4 million in book advances during his time in office. The filing arrived 90 days after its May 15 deadline and was revised four times in September before being released.

The two book advances, $2 million each, came from Skyhorse Publishing, which has also published other Kennedy books and paid him $451,000 in consulting fees the year before he became HHS secretary. One of the books in progress will be titled “Unsettled Science,” a twist on the term “settled science” often used to describe the evidence for vaccine safety.

The disclosure also lists gifts from Gavin de Becker, a celebrity security adviser who wrote “Forbidden Facts,” a Skyhorse Publishing book alleging government suppression of information about brain damage from childhood vaccines. The gifts, which totaled more than a quarter of a million dollars, included free flights to and from Fiji and Greece and the use of a vacation home in Washington, D.C.

In an email to NPR, de Becker said the gifts were part of an ongoing friendship. “Bobby is my closest friend in the world for many years, and I’m grateful to be able to host him anytime,” de Becker said. “He has hosted my family at his homes, he’s stayed at mine, we take family vacations together every year, etc. I’m glad to be able to host him anytime, and I love the times our families spend traveling together. My gifts and our family vacations began years before he was at HHS — and I have nothing whatsoever to do with HHS in any regard.”

Virginia Canter of the Democracy Defenders Fund, a nonprofit focused on fighting corruption and protecting elections, told NPR the amounts were unusual for a federal officeholder. “Those are large amounts of money for a government’s public servant to receive while he is in office,” Canter said. Canter said the size of the gifts and advances raised questions about whether they represent a prohibited “supplementation of salary.”

As for the gifts from de Becker, Canter said, “I would really want to know more about the nature of their friendship. In other words, if it’s a gift … based on a personal relationship, is he giving these gifts to all of his friends or is it just Mr. Kennedy?” Canter said Kennedy may have wealthy friends who can afford to treat him, but what’s OK when you’re in the private sector is different when you become a public servant.

Canter also said the timing of the book advances was noteworthy given restrictions on outside income for Senate-confirmed officials. “There are strict prohibitions on government officials, particularly those who serve as presidential appointees confirmed by the Senate, [and] the acceptance of what we call ‘outside earned income,’” Canter said. She said she would have expected any advances to appear in Kennedy’s initial filing during his 2025 confirmation process.

Kathleen Clark, a government ethics law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, agreed. “It seems very weird that RFK Jr. has accepted $4 million in book advances for two books that he has promised not to write or edit during the time that he’s HHS Secretary,” Clark said, referring to Kennedy’s ethics agreement.

Kennedy’s ethics agreement stated that “During my appointment, I will not engage in any writing, editing, or promotional activities associated with these books and will not provide any other services under the publishing agreement.” But in July, Kennedy posted from his personal X account about The Real Anthony Fauci, a 2021 Skyhorse Publishing book he wrote criticizing Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director. Clark said Kennedy was not supposed to promote his previous Skyhorse Publishing work under that agreement.

The filing was due May 15 and was not submitted until August 13, 90 days late, after receiving an extension. The document was then revised four times in September before being provided to NPR. It has been approved by ethics officials at HHS, but the separate Office of Government Ethics had not yet signed off at the time of NPR’s reporting.

The disclosure also listed a nearly $7,000 payment from Wisner Baum, a law firm that was suing Merck over claims that it failed to properly warn consumers about risks from its HPV vaccine, Gardasil. Kennedy’s disclosure described the payment as a “final payment at termination of agreement of Referral Fees On Contingency Fee Case.” The law firm told NPR it was not related to the Gardasil case. For context, according to Kennedy’s original 2025 financial disclosure and ethics agreement, he planned to collect 10% through contingency fees in the Gardasil case and had received $856,559 in contingency fees from Wisner Baum from other cases in the year prior.

During his January 29, 2025 confirmation hearing, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, pressed Kennedy over his contingency-fee arrangement. “You go online, you do commercials to encourage people to sign up with Wisner Baum to join lawsuits against vaccine makers,” Warren said. “And for everyone who signs up, you personally get paid, and if they win their case, you get 10% of what they win. So, if you bring in someone who gets $10 million, you walk away with a million dollars.” Kennedy subsequently amended his ethics agreement, stating he would “irrevocably assign my right to receive payment in all outstanding contingency fee cases … to a non-dependent, adult family member.”

In early June, Merck agreed to settle the lawsuit. Merck issued the following statement: “After a thorough review of the body of evidence that supports the safety and efficacy profile of our HPV vaccines, both parties in the litigation concluded that it was appropriate to end the litigation in its entirety, resolving all but one case in an amount that is considerably less than Merck’s anticipated costs of defense in the litigation and that is not material to Merck.” Neither Merck nor Wisner Baum would comment on the size of the settlement. According to other reports, the settlement was $50 million.

A group of lawmakers in July questioned whether a Kennedy family member was profiting from the settlement; Kennedy responded on social media that the fees went “back to the Wisner Baum law firm,” something that isn’t in his records filed with the Office of Government Ethics. Wisner Baum told NPR that “Secretary Kennedy has not received any fees recovered from the Gardasil cases, nor has anyone in his family.” Kennedy’s son Conor is a lawyer at Wisner Baum and is listed on its website as an associate attorney; the Gardasil case is not included in his firm profile.

Last Thursday, Kennedy delivered a keynote address to Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine group he co-founded that has filed dozens of lawsuits against federal agencies, state governments and companies over vaccine requirements and other policies it disagrees with. According to a federal ethics filing, the group paid Kennedy $326,056 in salary and bonuses in the year before he left his role as chairman of the board and chief legal counsel to lead HHS.

“Let me be clear. You have a strong and steadfast friend at the White House,” Kennedy told the crowd, according to NPR. “We’ve accomplished in 19 months … things that would have seemed unthinkable two years ago.” In the minutes before Kennedy took the stage, MAHA Institute president Mark Gorton was calling vaccines “a public health disaster,” NPR reported.

Dr. Jason Goldman, the immediate past president of the American College of Physicians, told NPR: “Having a Secretary of Health and Human Services not only give a keynote address at an anti-vaccine group that he helped found and continue to promote his anti-vaccine agenda is endangering the health, safety and lives of American citizens and the world at large. Nothing that I have seen with the current Secretary of Health and Human Services and his handling of public health and vaccines is, in my opinion, the norm.”

The Department of Health and Human Services did not answer a detailed list of questions from NPR. Instead, the department emailed a statement saying “Secretary Kennedy complies with all applicable federal ethics laws, regulations, and financial disclosure requirements. The Secretary works with HHS career ethics officials to ensure that his financial interests, gifts, outside activities, and other reportable matters are appropriately disclosed and handled consistent with those requirements.”