RFK Jr. Admits He Didn’t Come Clean on Anti-Vax Fortune

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. failed to disclose hundreds of thousands of dollars he made from his anti-vax crusade, Donald Trump’s transition team has admitted to the Daily Beast.

Trump’s pick for health secretary previously said his career as the founder, chairman, and general counsel of the nonprofit Children’s Health Defense was “unpaid” and “the opposite of a profit motive.”

In personal financial disclosure forms required for all presidential candidates, Kennedy initially reported that he had earned $731,470.53 in 2022 and 2023. (In the summer of 2023, he reported making $515,960 the previous year from CHD; in the summer of 2024, he reported making $215,510.53.)

But documents obtained by the Daily Beast show that Kennedy—after being nominated by Trump for his Cabinet—then quietly amended those forms to disclose that he had actually earned far more from his anti-vaccine nonprofit: a total of $1.2 million.

“Bobby’s [personal financial disclosure] amounts were reported incorrectly,” a Trump transition team official told the Daily Beast in response to questions about the new documents.

Trump transition spokeswoman Katie Miller confirmed, “This was an oversight in the preparation of the PFD.”

RFK Jr. has described his anti-vax drive as a labor of love that cost him friends—and money.

In 2017, he told MAGA journalist Tucker Carlson, “I’m getting unpaid for this. This has been probably the worse career move that I’ve ever made.” He told InfoWars in 2021 that his anti-vaccine advocacy work had “the opposite of a profit motive” and had “damaged relationships even with people in my family.”

In fact, Kennedy earned $2.2 million between 2017 and 2023 from the nonprofit he founded, according to federal tax returns filed by his group.

When he was a candidate for president during the 2024 election—first as a Democrat, then as an independent—Kennedy significantly underreported how much he made in the last two years he led the group: an omission of $431,156.72.

He blamed the miscalculation on what he called “an inadvertent error” because he conflated “net pay” with “gross wages,” an odd mistake for a multimillionaire who can afford professional accountants.

“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 wrote to the U.S. Office of Government Ethics on Dec. 11, 2024. “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.”

In his corrected filing last month, Kennedy reported making $836,571.25 in 2022 and $326,056.00 in 2023 for a total of $1,165,627.25 in the final two years that he served as chairman of the nonprofit, formerly known as the World Mercury Project.

“In interviews in public he was telling reporters he was making nothing,” a veteran of vetting presidential Cabinet-level nominees told the Daily Beast. “And when he ran for president, he had to disclose it. And in fact, he got over $2 million.”

After amending his financial disclosure forms, Kennedy’s total reported income, including from consulting, legal work and speaking fees, is listed as $8.3 million.

His Dec. 11 letter to the Office of Government Ethics was delivered about a month after Trump announced the Kennedy scion as his controversial choice to be HHS secretary. In filings with OGE, Kennedy several times amended his earnings from the nonprofit, which he has used as a tool to warn parents about supposed a link between vaccines and autism and chronic diseases in children. (A link between vaccines and autism has widely been debunked by scientists.)

And the letter comes as Kennedy faces confirmation hearings in two separate committees, including the Senate Finance Committee, where administration nominees, especially those at the Cabinet level, are put under a hot microscope. Their tax returns and financial disclosures are combed through, line by line, by the committee’s accountants and lawyers.

Confirmation hearings for Kennedy have not yet been set in stone in either Finance or the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. But Senate aides told the Daily Beast they expect Kennedy’s confirmation hearings to take place before the end of January.

Kennedy’s vaccine skepticism has led to vocal criticism from key senators, including Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, a physician, who sits on Finance and chairs the HELP Committee.

As the process advances, a coalition of scientists and public health professionals began circulating a letter this week in opposition of Kennedy’s nomination, saying he lacks the health policy and administrative experience to run HHS and disparaging his conspiracy theories.

“His unfounded, fringe beliefs could significantly undermine public health practices across the country and around the world,” the experts warned, adding, “It is unfathomable that President Trump, whose Administration implemented Operation Warp Speed, the historic, rapid development of highly effective vaccines for COVID-19, would now be nominating someone who is decidedly anti-vaccine and could, if confirmed, undermine not only the progress we’ve made in saving lives from COVID-19 but also from life-threatening infectious diseases including polio, tetanus, measles, mumps, seasonal flu and more.”

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