(WASHINGTON) — In 2020, as a pandemic raged across the globe, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took to social media to appeal to his hundreds of thousands of followers on Facebook.
The son of the late U.S. Attorney General and New York Sen. Bobby Kennedy and nephew of President John F. Kennedy, the younger Kennedy said he was looking for parents whose children had been vaccinated against a different virus — human papillomavirus or HPV — and later grew sick.
Public health researchers and doctors said there was no evidence that the vaccine, Gardasil, was linked to the health problems he cited, noting 160 favorable studies on safety. A federal court created to compensate people injured by vaccines also had already rejected a similar claim, citing “insufficient proof” that the vaccine was behind the plaintiff’s health issues.
But in his posts, Kennedy said that he and lawyer Michael Baum – “one of my closest friends” — believed there was still a path forward. The families could sue the manufacturer Merck in civil court claiming marketing fraud – allegations Merck denies.
“If you have been injured by Gardasil, call us,” Kennedy wrote on Facebook, posting a toll-free number invoking his famous initials “RFK.”
According to financial disclosure documents released last week, Kennedy’s primary source of income in the past year were large sums of referral fees from multiple law firms, including Baum’s office, whose civil lawsuit against Merck’s Gardasil vaccine went to trial in Los Angeles County Superior Court last week.
Kennedy’s leading role in building a case against Merck is now raising questions about how he might wield his power as the nation’s next health secretary – a job intended as an impartial overseer in public health – while in line for potential payouts from a major pharmaceutical company.
“This disclosure shows that RFK Jr. made millions off of peddling dangerous anti-vaccine conspiracies,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., a member of the Senate Finance Committee, which will oversee Kennedy’s nomination.
“Even worse, if he is confirmed, his finances will still be tied to the outcomes of anti-vaccine lawsuits — even as he’d be tasked with regulating them as health secretary. These are outrageous conflicts of interest that endanger public health,” Warren said in a statement provided to reporters.
Kennedy, who is expected to testify for the first time Wednesday before the Senate panel, said he has resigned his work with several law firms, including Wisner Baum, and that if confirmed he would not be involved in legal cases.
But in a plan greenlit by federal ethics officials, Kennedy said he plans to retain his right to 10 percent of fees awarded in contingency cases with Wisner Baum so long as the cases don’t involve the U.S. government. The federal government is not a party in the civil lawsuit against Merck.
“I am entitled to receive a portion of future recovery in these cases based upon the set percentage as set forth in the referral agreement,” he wrote.
Kennedy disclosed another $856,559 in income from Wisner Baum referral fees, although the documents do not say which legal cases were tied to those fees. Other income included $8.8 million from his firm Kennedy & Madonna. Kennedy said he was terminating his relationship with the firm, which would no longer use his name.
A spokesperson for Kennedy declined to comment on the record on the Wisner Baum payouts and ongoing lawsuit. Baum did not respond to a request for comment.
In a statement on the civil lawsuit, Merck said “an overwhelming body of scientific evidence, including more than 30 years of research and development along with real world evidence generated by Merck and by independent investigators, continues to support the safety and efficacy of our HPV vaccines. The plaintiff’s allegations have no merit, and we remain committed to vigorously defending against these claims.”
Robert Krakow, a New York lawyer who specializes in vaccine injury cases and has worked with Kennedy in the past, said referral fees are fairly standard when it comes to personal injury claims.
Kennedy has been a “galvanizing force” when it came to questioning vaccine safety, providing a special touch when talking to families because “he was very sincere and listened to people,” Krakow said. Using social media platforms to recruit clients is a natural extension of that work, he said.
“It’s not often you have a celebrity do that,” Krawkow said of Kennedy’s work to find clients who claim vaccine injuries. “But there’s nothing inherently wrong with recruiting people for referral fees.”
Reuters was first to report Kennedy’s extensive role in the Gardasil vaccine lawsuit.
Because Kennedy’s financial arrangement was allowed by ethics officials, it’s not clear whether the issue will be a sticking point for Republicans eager to align with Trump. According to the agreement released last week, Kennedy can keep the fees from Wisner Baum so long as the independent ethics office at the Health and Human Services Department determines the case does “not involve the United States as a party and in which the United States does not have a direct and substantial interest.”
Kennedy also has insisted in private meetings with senators that he is not “anti-vaccine,” but only wants more study, according to one person familiar with the discussions.
The messaging aligns with what Kennedy has said publicly. Kennedy often notes he was vaccinated as a child and opted to vaccinate his own children decades ago. His work as chair and chief litigator of the Children’s Heath Defense, which opposes the recommended schedule of vaccines for children, did not begin until around 2015.
“What I’ve said is I’m pro-science and pro-safety,” he told a local New Hampshire television station in 2023.
Still, public health experts and many senators — several of them old enough to remember serious outbreaks of measles and polio in the 1950s — have expressed serious concerns about his role in eroding confidence in vaccines even if he says he won’t outright block access to them.
“We potentially face a massive health hazard, maybe especially for our children,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders, the top Democrat on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
Sanders, a Vermont Democrat who had been seen as someone who might be able to find common ground with Kennedy on environmental and food policy, said the concern with the incoming administration was that “we may revert back to those terrible days when so many children died” before age 3.
As head of the Health and Human Services Department, Kennedy would be responsible for the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates the selling and marketing of vaccines, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which collects data on vaccines to issue public health recommendations that are closely followed by doctors.
If confirmed, he could insist upon appointing vaccine skeptics to the independent group that reviews FDA data on vaccines.
Kennedy also could alter how information is used from CDC’s public reporting system known as “VAERS” that allows anyone to flag possible adverse reactions from vaccines. The reports are unverified but used to look for potential patterns that can be investigated.
Health officials say symptoms reported in VAERS are often found to be unrelated from a person’s immunization history.
Dorit Reiss, a professor at UC Law San Francisco and expert in legal issues on vaccinations, said handing over that process to someone with Kennedy’s track record would be unprecedented.
“Kennedy has been a committed anti-vaccine activist for a long time. I have seen no indication that his views have changed,” Reiss said.
ABC’s Sony Salzman and Will McDuffie contributed to this report.
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