Allies inside the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement handed U.S. health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. $4 million in book advances over the past year, according to a report published Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2026. The payments came after he assured federal ethics officials he would stay out of publishing while in government.
In a 2024 ethics filing, Kennedy pledged: “I will not engage in writing, editing, marketing or promotional services for any of these books during government service.”
A report published Sept. 24 said Kennedy “defied his ethics agreement by promoting one of his books on social media,” beyond taking cash for book advances and accepting expensive gifts.
Advances Tied to Skyhorse
The advances are tied to forthcoming titles from Skyhorse Publishing. Tony Lyons, a friend of Kennedy, owns the house and also runs the MAHA Center, a nonprofit that describes its mission as taking on the nation’s health crisis. Lyons also leads MAHA Action. Kennedy leads the MAHA movement from the top of the federal health bureaucracy, and Lyons’ publishing operation and the movement are, in other words, close cousins.
Kennedy has written several books with Skyhorse, among them “The Real Anthony Fauci” and “The Wuhan Cover-Up.” Both pressed anti-establishment health arguments that later became organizing themes of the MAHA movement.
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.”
Housing, Airfare and Salary
Gavin de Becker, a security consultant and Kennedy ally, owns the vacation home where the secretary took $126,500 worth of housing in Washington, his 2026 financial disclosure forms show. The disclosures list gifts from de Becker including nearly $45,000 in round-trip airfare to Greece, plus nearly $97,000 in round-trip airfare to Fiji, where de Becker owns a compound.
Kennedy’s super political action committee took in a donation of at least $10 million from de Becker in 2024, and $9.65 million of that sum was returned. He is also a Skyhorse author, with a book titled “Forbidden Facts: Government Deceit & Suppression About Brain Damage From Childhood Vaccines.”
A friendship going back many years puts Kennedy among his closest friends, de Becker told the New York Times, adding that he welcomes him as a guest at any time. Kennedy has hosted his family, he has stayed at Kennedy’s homes and the two families vacation together every year, he said, a habit he said predates Kennedy’s current job.
MAHA Action, a nonprofit advocacy group that Lyons also leads, paid $210,000 in consultation fees to Kennedy’s wife, Cheryl Hines, according to the filings.
Children’s Health Defense 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 the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), according to a federal ethics filing cited by NPR. Kennedy co-founded the group. His disclosure was filed 90 days late, after an extension, and was then revised four times in September.
Kennedy addressed an anti-vaccine conference hosted by Children’s Health Defense in Washington, D.C., on the Thursday before NPR’s Sept. 24 report. “Let me be clear. You have a strong and steadfast friend at the White House,” he told the crowd. At the same event, MAHA Institute President Mark Gorton called vaccines “a public health disaster.”
A spokesperson for HHS 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 ensure that his gifts, financial interests, outside activities and anything else he must report are disclosed and managed according to those rules, the spokesperson said.
Ethics Lawyer Presses for Details
Dinner from a former classmate earns an official more benefit of the doubt than lavish gifts from major political donors do, Kedric Payne, vice president and senior ethics counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, told the New York Times. Voters, he said, deserve to know precisely what such gifts consist of and whether the donor has business pending before the government.
Summit Opens in Washington
The second annual Make America Healthy Again Summit got underway in Washington on Tuesday, Sept. 29. Kennedy and Vice President JD Vance are scheduled to close the daylong event with a fireside chat at 5 p.m., and the agenda covers food and nutrition, healthcare costs, cancer detection, artificial intelligence, psychedelic medicine and environmental health. Boxer Mike Tyson is also scheduled to headline the event alongside Kennedy and Vance, according to a roundup citing Axios and Politico.
