U.S. health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has defied his ethics agreement by promoting one of his books on social media and accepted expensive gifts, according to reporting published Sept. 24 2026, a breach of a pledge he made to federal ethics officials in a 2024 filing.
Kennedy has disclosed advances worth $4 million to write two books, along with free flights from a friend while he has served in office. The disclosure follows a New York Times report published Wednesday, Sept. 23, that Kennedy collected $4 million in book advances over the past year from allies inside the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement, and that the payments flowed to him after he had assured federal ethics officials he would stay out of the publishing business while serving in government.
In the 2024 ethics filing, Kennedy pledged: “I will not engage in writing, editing, marketing or promotional services for any of these books during government service.”
Kathleen Clark, a government ethics specialist at Washington University in St. Louis, told NPR: “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.”
Flights, Housing and a Donor
Kennedy’s 2026 financial disclosure forms show he accepted $126,500 worth of housing in Washington, at a vacation home owned by Gavin de Becker, a security consultant and Kennedy ally. The disclosures list gifts from de Becker including 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.
De Becker donated at least $10 million in 2024 to Kennedy’s super political action committee. Of that, $9.65 million was returned. De Becker is a Skyhorse author who published a book titled “Forbidden Facts: Government Deceit & Suppression About Brain Damage From Childhood Vaccines.”
De Becker told the New York Times that Kennedy has been one of his closest friends for many years and that he is glad to host him at any time. Kennedy has hosted his family, he said, and he has stayed at Kennedy’s homes. The two families take a vacation together every year, a habit, he said, that predates Kennedy’s current job.
Kedric Payne, a vice president and senior ethics counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, told the New York Times that lavish gifts to an official from major political donors don’t get the same benefit of the doubt as dinner from a former classmate. 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 (HHS) spokesperson said in a statement to the New York Times that Kennedy “complies with all applicable federal ethics laws, regulations and financial disclosure requirements.” The spokesperson added that the secretary works with career ethics officials at the department to make certain his financial interests, gifts, outside activities and other reportable matters are disclosed and handled in line with those rules.
Payments in the MAHA Orbit
Tony Lyons owns Skyhorse Publishing, is a friend of Kennedy and also leads the MAHA Center, a nonprofit that casts its work as an effort to confront the country’s health crisis. Lyons also leads MAHA Action, a nonprofit advocacy group.
Cheryl Hines, Kennedy’s wife, accepted $210,000 in consultation fees from MAHA Action, according to the filings — a second organization in the same orbit as the publisher paying for her husband’s books.
Kennedy has written several books with Skyhorse, among them “The Real Anthony Fauci” and “The Wuhan Cover-Up,” both of which pressed the anti-establishment health arguments that later became the organizing themes of the MAHA movement.
Kennedy co-founded the anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense. According to a federal ethics filing, the group 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.
Kennedy’s disclosure was filed 90 days late, after an extension, and was then revised four times in September.
A Keynote in Washington
Kennedy delivered a keynote at a Children’s Health Defense conference in Washington, D.C., dated to “last Thursday.” He told the crowd: “Let me be clear. You have a strong and steadfast friend at the White House.”
Before Kennedy took the stage, MAHA Institute President Mark Gorton called vaccines “a public health disaster.”
