A few hours after Dr. Anthony S. Fauci invoked his Fifth Amendment right in refusing to answer questions from Senate Republicans last week, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took to social media to plug a book he published about Dr. Fauci in 2021, declaring it “the #1 non-fiction hardcover best-seller.”
Later that day, Mr. Kennedy went on television to say much the same thing. “I wrote a book about Anthony Fauci in 2021,” he told the Fox News host Sean Hannity. “It was the biggest selling book of 2021. It sold 1.4 million copies.”
Mr. Kennedy’s mini book tour came as Republicans accused Dr. Fauci of enriching himself by enlisting staff and colleagues to enter contests with cash awards, including a $1 million prize that government ethics officials allowed him to keep. But Mr. Kennedy; Senator Rand Paul, the Kentucky Republican who chaired the hearing; and even Mr. Kennedy’s son Robert F. Kennedy III have all published critical books about Dr. Fauci whose sales may have gotten a boost from the negative public attention the men have helped generate against him.
Mr. Kennedy’s office did not respond to a request for comment on behalf of the secretary or of his son. Mr. Paul’s office also did not respond to a request for comment.
All three books are published by Skyhorse Publishing, whose founder Tony Lyons is a close adviser to Mr. Kennedy and runs a political action committee and other groups supporting the secretary’s agenda. Mr. Paul’s book was published in 2023 by Regnery Publishing, which was acquired by Skyhorse in December of that year. (Skyhorse also recently published a memoir by the actress Cheryl Hines, Mr. Kennedy’s wife.)
“‘The Real Anthony Fauci’ is the most important book in a generation,” Mr. Lyons said in an interview on Monday, referring to the work of the elder Mr. Kennedy. He said royalties from the book, which paints Dr. Fauci as being in the pocket of a corrupt pharmaceutical industry, went to Children’s Health Defense, the nonprofit Mr. Kennedy founded to advance his crusade against environmental toxins and vaccines, and not to Mr. Kennedy himself.
“He wasn’t doing it for money. He wasn’t doing it for power. He wasn’t doing it for fame. So please write that,” Mr. Lyons said.
Ethics experts say that Mr. Kennedy, his son and Mr. Paul did not cross any legal or ethical lines, but several said the secretary and the senator did cross a threshold for hypocrisy by using their platforms to sell books about Dr. Fauci while accusing the scientist of profiting from his own public service.
“It’s pretty rich,” said Donald Sherman, an expert in government ethics at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group.
Kathleen Clark, an expert in government ethics and law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, said that the book promotion “may not be a legal conflict, but it is a conflict, and it may help explain their actual motivations.” She likened the hearing to a “publicity event for Skyhorse Publishing.”
The hearing led to a spike in sales for Mr. Kennedy’s book, according to the MAHA Report, a newsletter published by MAHA Action, an advocacy group headed by Mr. Lyons. The book is selling for $32.50 on the group’s online store.
Mr. Paul must adhere to Senate ethics rules, which bar most outside payments but exempt book royalties and advances. His 2023 book “Deception: The Great Covid Cover-Up” accuses Dr. Fauci of funding research in China that led to the coronavirus pandemic, and lying about it to Congress — accusations that Dr. Fauci denies. Mr. Paul has twice referred Dr. Fauci to the Justice Department for prosecution, and those allegations were a central focus of last week’s hearing.
Mr. Paul reported a total of $275,000 in royalties from Regnery Publishing: $185,000 in 2023 and $90,000 in 2024.
On Wednesday, the panel Mr. Paul chairs, the Senate Homeland Security Committee, is scheduled to vote on whether to hold Dr. Fauci in contempt of Congress for his refusal to testify.
Mr. Kennedy used his personal X account, which has nearly 6 million followers, and not his official government account, to promote his Fauci book. As a cabinet secretary, Mr. Kennedy faces the more restrictions than the senator; he must abide by the ethics filing he submitted to win Senate confirmation.
Mr. Kennedy previously had a consulting agreement with Skyhorse Publishing but pledged in the filing to terminate it. In a separate financial disclosure, he reported that the company had paid him $451,000 in consulting fees for “author introductions, book ideas and forewords to other authors’ works & bonus.”
His ethics filing said the publisher paid him royalties for “several books,” without naming them. His financial disclosure showed that he received a $1,000 advance for his 2023 book “Vax-Unvax: Let The Science Speak.” that Ms. Hines had received a $600,000 advance for her memoir.
In addition, Mr. Kennedy disclosed that he was entitled to an advance of $1 million to $5 million for two upcoming books, “Unsettled Science” and “A Defense of Israel,” and up to $15,000 for another yet-to-be published book, “America’s Path Back to Moral Leadership.”
“During my appointment,” Mr. Kennedy promised, “I will not engage in any writing, editing or promotional activities associated with these books and will not provide any other services under the publishing agreement.”
Of the three authors, Mr. Kennedy’s son has the greatest amount of freedom. As a private citizen, he may publish what he pleases. His book, “The Confessions of Anthony Fauci,” bills itself as a “fictional memoir.” It is published almost in a diary format, with Dr. Fauci talking directly to the reader.
In his X message to his followers, Mr. Kennedy called his own Fauci publication “the most censored book of the decade,” complaining that bookstores and libraries refused to carry it, and major newspapers declined to review it.
He singled out The New York Times, asserting that the paper had refused to publish a paid advertisement for the “The Real Anthony Fauci” and listed the book as No. 7 on its best-seller list, “even though it outsold any other book by thousands of copies.”
A spokesman for The Times said that the paper published an advertisement for the book on Page 5 of its Dec. 19, 2021, Book Review section.
The Times does not disclose its precise methodology for ranking books, saying only that the rankings “reflect unit sales reported on a confidential basis by vendors offering a wide range of general interest titles in the United States.” The spokesman declined further comment.
Mr. Kennedy’s book made The Times’s weekly best-seller list for hardcover nonfiction 19 times since it was published in 2021. Its highest rank on the hardcover nonfiction list was No. 7. It also reached No. 5 on the combined print and e-book nonfiction list.
Dr. Fauci’s 2024 memoir, “On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service,” spent seven weeks on The Times’s best-seller list that year, twice reaching No. 1 in both hardcover nonfiction and in combined print and e-book nonfiction.
In a diary he kept on his government computer, which Mr. Paul released publicly, Dr. Fauci wrote that he had mentioned Mr. Kennedy’s book to a lawyer, Don Walker, before its publication, saying it would undoubtedly be “a very scandalous book.” Mr. Walker, he said, “was adamant that should do nothing about this since Bobby Kennedy has absolutely no credibility.”
That was five years ago, long before anyone envisioned Mr. Kennedy would become health secretary.
