Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took home millions of dollars while running for president in 2023, primarily through his work with various law firms and his leadership at a vaccine-skeptic nonprofit organization.
Kennedy, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, made roughly $10.7 million in 2023, according to recently amended financial disclosures filed in connection with his presidential campaign. In addition to a sizable annual income, Kennedy reported holding significant assets, including between $500,001 and $1 million worth of Bitcoin and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of commercial real estate in Chicago.
In his initial 2023 financial disclosure, filed in July, Kennedy misrepresented his income by more than $200,000 by underreporting salaries he earned from Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit organization he founded, and JW Howard Attorneys, where he is employed as a litigator.
Kennedy made more money while running for president than he did in previous years, with an earlier disclosure indicating that he earned $7.8 million in 2022. In both 2022 and 2023, the lion’s share of Kennedy’s income came from his partnership stake in his environmental law firm, Kennedy & Madonna. The law firm netted him $8.6 million in 2023, up from about $5 million in 2022.
While earning millions for his work on environmental conservation, Kennedy simultaneously received tens of thousands of dollars from Arctic Royalty, an oil and gas rights leasing company. The company operates in Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida.
This level of wealth is not unusual for somebody bearing the Kennedy name. Caroline Kennedy, his cousin, had a net worth of between $250 million and $500 million as of 2013. Forbes estimated in 2015 that the whole Kennedy family was worth around $1.2 billion.
Kennedy took leave from Children’s Health Defense in April 2023 to begin his presidential campaign. Despite only working for a couple of months of the year, Kennedy took home $326,056 in salary and bonus from the organization. Children’s Health Defense has run a number of anti-vaccine campaigns since its founding in 2007. One campaign involved the nonprofit organization producing a film documenting the history of racism in medicine and using that to sow skepticism of vaccines among black people. Before Facebook banned anti-vaccine advertisements, Children’s Health Defense was one of the primary funders of such messaging.
Kennedy’s view on vaccines has created some hurdles for his confirmation as health secretary. For instance, he recently clarified to reporters that he was “all for” the polio vaccine after reports that his attorney had lobbied the Food and Drug Administration to revoke the approval for the polio shot caused concern on Capitol Hill.
“But then I guess it begs the question: is it just that one vaccine or kind of where is it coming from more broadly?” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), a centrist Republican, said of the comment. “So, those are the conversations that I think are important for me to have with him, because I do think that vaccines save lives.”
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Other sources of income Kennedy reported include $12,000 in speaking fees paid by Hillsdale College, $413,500 from Skyhorse Publishing for consulting fees related to book ideas and short pieces of writing, and $30,000 for healthcare consulting. He also received about $22,000 from a National Resources Defense Council benefit plan. The NRDC is an environmental nonprofit organization that maintains a Beijing office operating under the supervision of the Chinese government and has employed members of the Chinese Communist Party.
Kennedy and his wife’s total assets were worth up to $17.9 million as of 2023, according to the financial disclosure.
