Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the U.S. health secretary, collected $4 million in book advances over the past year from allies inside the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement, according to a New York Times report published Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2026 — payments that flowed to him after he had assured federal ethics officials he would stay out of the publishing business while serving in government.
The advances were tied to forthcoming titles from Skyhorse Publishing, the house owned by Tony Lyons, a friend of Kennedy who also leads the MAHA Center, a nonprofit that casts its work as an effort to confront the country’s health crisis. Lyons’ publishing operation and the movement Kennedy leads from the top of the federal health bureaucracy are, in other words, close cousins.
That proximity gives the figure its bite. 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.”
The Publisher in Kennedy’s Orbit
Kennedy is no stranger to Skyhorse. He has written several books with the publisher, 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.
The advances are not the only money moving between Kennedy and his political circle. His 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.
Flights, a Vacation Home and a Returned Donation
De Becker’s generosity extended well past a place to sleep. The disclosures list gifts from him that include 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. He also donated at least $10 million in 2024 to Kennedy’s super political action committee, $9.65 million of which was returned. And like Kennedy, he is a Skyhorse author, having 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. He said Kennedy has hosted his family, that he has stayed at Kennedy’s homes, and that the two families take a vacation together every year — a habit, he said, that predates Kennedy’s current job.
What the Health Department Says
A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) 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.
The filings reach into the family as well. Cheryl Hines, Kennedy’s wife, accepted $210,000 in consultation fees from MAHA Action, a nonprofit advocacy group that Lyons also leads — a second organization in the same orbit as the publisher writing the checks for her husband’s books.
Ethics experts have questioned the arrangement. “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,” Kathleen Clark, a government ethics specialist at Washington University in St. Louis, told NPR. NPR also reported that Kennedy’s disclosure was filed 90 days late, after an extension, and was then revised four times in September.
Ethics Lawyers Weigh In
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.