An ethics official at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) signed U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s annual financial disclosure on Sept. 17, 2026, and the filing lists more than $250,000 in gifts over the past year in addition to $4 million in book advances.
Kennedy has disclosed advances worth $4 million to write two books, plus free flights from a friend while serving in office.
Allies inside the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement handed Kennedy $4 million in book advances over the past year, according to a report published Wednesday, Sept. 23. Federal ethics officials had already been told by him that publishing work would be off-limits for the duration of his government service when the money reached him.
In his 2024 ethics filing, Kennedy pledged: “I will not engage in writing, editing, marketing or promotional services for any of these books during government service.”
Kennedy posted on X in July 2026 about his 2021 book criticizing Dr. Anthony Fauci. An ethics expert told NPR that his ethics agreement bars him from promoting his Skyhorse Publishing work, in reporting published Sept. 24.
“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,” Kathleen Clark, a government ethics specialist at Washington University in St. Louis, told NPR.
Virginia Canter of the Democracy Defenders Fund told NPR the book-advance payments were large enough to raise questions. Federal rules bar Senate-confirmed officials of Kennedy’s rank from earning outside income, including pay for book writing while in office.
Flights, Housing and a Donor
Gavin de Becker, a security consultant and Kennedy ally, owns the vacation home in Washington where Kennedy accepted $126,500 worth of housing, his 2026 financial disclosure forms show. Among the gifts from de Becker that the disclosures list are nearly $45,000 in round-trip airfare to Greece and nearly $97,000 in round-trip airfare to Fiji, where de Becker owns a compound.
Kennedy’s super political action committee received at least $10 million from de Becker in 2024, and $9.65 million of that was returned. A Skyhorse author, de Becker published a book titled “Forbidden Facts: Government Deceit & Suppression About Brain Damage From Childhood Vaccines.”
Kennedy has been one of his closest friends for many years and is welcome to stay at any time, de Becker told the New York Times. He said Kennedy has hosted his family, that he has stayed at Kennedy’s homes, and that the two families take a vacation together every year, a habit he said predates Kennedy’s current job.
De Becker also told NPR that Kennedy is his closest friend, that their families vacation together every year, that the gifts predate Kennedy’s time at HHS, and that he has nothing to do with the department.
Dinner from a former classmate earns a benefit of the doubt that lavish gifts to an official from major political donors do not, Kedric Payne, a vice president and senior ethics counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, told the New York Times. The public, he said, is entitled to know exactly what those gifts are and whether the donor has any interests pending before the government.
A Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson said in a statement to the New York Times that Kennedy “complies with all applicable federal ethics laws, regulations and financial disclosure requirements.” Career ethics officials at the department work with the secretary to make certain his financial interests, gifts, outside activities and other reportable matters are disclosed and handled in line with those rules, the spokesperson added.
Payments in the MAHA Orbit
Skyhorse Publishing belongs to Tony Lyons, a friend of Kennedy who also heads the MAHA Center, a nonprofit that frames its mission as a bid to take on the country’s health crisis. MAHA Action, a nonprofit advocacy group that has run a seven-figure TV ad campaign promoting the administration’s health agenda, is led by Lyons as well.
Skyhorse Publishing also paid Kennedy $451,000 in consulting fees in the year before he joined the Cabinet. MAHA Action — a second organization in the same orbit as the publisher paying for her husband’s books — paid $210,000 in consultation fees to Cheryl Hines, Kennedy’s wife, according to the filings.
Richard Painter, the chief White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, said the arrangement under which Hines received about $210,000 in consulting fees from MAHA Action “reeks of a conflict of interest.”
The $4 million consisted of two separate $2 million advances from Skyhorse Publishing, one of them for a book titled “Unsettled Science,” a play on the phrase often used to describe the evidence supporting vaccine safety. Skyhorse has published several of Kennedy’s books, among them “The Real Anthony Fauci” and “The Wuhan Cover-Up.” Both pressed the anti-establishment health arguments that later became the organizing themes of the MAHA movement.
An extension preceded the disclosure, which Kennedy filed 90 days late and then revised four times in September. He has faced a recent call to investigate whether he perjured himself during his Senate confirmation hearing.
A Keynote in Washington
A Children’s Health Defense conference in Washington, D.C., drew Kennedy as its keynote speaker on Thursday, Sept. 17. “Let me be clear. You have a strong and steadfast friend at the White House,” he told the crowd. Before Kennedy took the stage, MAHA Institute President Mark Gorton said the polio vaccine’s success was “a massive medical fraud.”
Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine group Kennedy helped found, paid him $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, a federal ethics filing shows.