President-elect Donald Trump is currently trying to get his cabinet nominations approved and that includes one of his most controversial picks: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. RFK has been selected to run the Department of Health and Human Services, which is a little bit like if Trump had selected Alex Jones to head the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Kennedy, long a conspiracy theorist and believer in fringe science, has made it known that he wants to totally upend the government’s approach to public health.
Anytime an incoming president makes cabinet nominations, those nominees become the subject of intense vetting, which is currently what’s happening to Kennedy. While there has been a shocking lack of animal-related scandals so far, journalists have discovered a number of financial irregularities that seem worth delving into.
On Wednesday, The Daily Beast revealed that Kennedy had underreported the income he made from his work at an “anti-vax” non-profit by some $431,156.72. In press appearances, Kennedy had previously claimed that his work for Children’s Health Defense, which he founded in 2007, was “unpaid.” In actuality, Kennedy made money from the non-profit and reported it. He initially reported that he had made $731,470.53 in 2022 and 2023. However, Kennedy actually made $1.2 million from his work at the non-profit during the last two years and a total of $2.2 million between 2017 and 2023, the Beast reports.
Kennedy has claimed that an “inadvertent error” in his previous financial disclosures led to the underreporting of his income from the organization.
“The purpose of this letter is to correct an inadvertent error in the financial disclosure report that I signed on June 30, 2023, and amended on Aug. 25, 2023,” Kennedy told the U.S. Office of Government Ethics in a letter sent in December, which The Daily Beast cites. “In my initial, and amended, disclosure, I disclosed the incorrect income amount for Children’s Health Defense f/k/a World Mercury Project by using net pay received vs gross wages.”
Gizmodo reached out to the Trump transition team for comment.
It’s possible that a guy as rich as Kennedy doesn’t really consider this kind of income worth mentioning. Maybe making a million dollars counts as “unpaid” work to the millionaire scion from a political dynasty. To the average American, however, it’s still considered serious money. “I’m getting unpaid for this,” Kennedy previously told Tucker Carlson. “This has been probably the worst career move that I’ve ever made.”
Kennedy has vowed to Make America Healthy Again (MAHA), which, in theory, sounds great. However, many of the ideas that Kennedy has about federal health policy could actually make tons of people sick. Kennedy’s confirmation hearings on Capitol Hill are nye and, already, the Trump transition team is attempting to make him sound slightly less scary. The Wall Street Journal has reported that Trump’s transition team recently sidelined some of Kennedy’s aides over their vaccine-related beliefs. Meanwhile, it’s been reported that Heather Flick, a former Trump official from his first administration, has been tapped as Kennedy’s chief of staff at HHS. As one former senior Trump health official involved in transition discussions put it to Politico: “The White House absolutely wants to make sure they have their people around him.”