Dr. Anthony Fauci is the most highly compensated federal employee making $456,028 in 2021 and outearned the president, four-star generals, and 4.3 million colleagues. Fauci is also the most visible. In recent years, no one impacted U.S. public health policy more.
Therefore, I feel it is incumbent upon all of us to give him oversight.
The controversy surrounding Dr. Fauci’s finances reached a fever pitch in January of this year. Our oversight findings at OpenTheBooks.com and my then-column at Forbes was right in the middle of it.
In the Senate hearing on January 11, 2022, U.S. Senator Roger Marshall (R-KS), cited my Forbes article in his questioning of Dr. Fauci’s salary and his financial disclosures. First, Fauci claimed his financials were “public information,” then, the hot mic caught the doctor calling the senator a “moron” and blaspheming, “Jesus Christ.”
It was Fauci’s code red moment and one of the top national news stories of the day.
As reported by The Washington Post, when Fauci went back to NIH, he admitted, “Maybe the senator has a point. Maybe my financial investments, though disclosed and available, should be much easier to see.”
In fact, Fauci’s financials were not available and I had firsthand knowledge. Immediately, I published the evidence behind the lack of transparency at Forbes: No Fauci’s Records Aren’t Available. Why Won’t NIH Immediately Release Them?
It was not public what Dr. Fauci’s salary was last year or this year. (The latest published salary at the time was from FY2020.)
It was not public what stocks and bonds Dr. Fauci bought and sold in 2020 or 2021, as he influenced Covid policies.
It was not public what Fauci received — or didn’t receive — in royalties. (There are up to 1,000 current and former NIH scientists receiving royalties.) Each payment could be a potential conflict of interest.
During an entire year, NIH had refused to produce Fauci’s job contract, job description, non-disclosure agreement, conflict of interest, financial disclosures, ethics agreements, and royalties subject to our OpenTheBooks FOIA request. In October 2021, we sued NIH with Judicial Watch and we still hadn’t received the 1,200 pages promised by the agency.
PolitiFact fact-checked Sen. Marshall and Dr. Fauci on their statements during the hearing, Fauci said all you have to do is ask for his financial disclosure. Yes, but it could take a while. PolitiFact cited my Forbes column as “Primary Source Material” for their Truth-O-Meter analysis.
In one of the top national news stories of the week, the fact checkers used my original reporting to hold both sides accountable in the heated U.S. Senate hearing.
On January 12th, Sen. Marshall wrote a demand letter to NIH for Dr. Fauci’s unredacted ethics/financial disclosures. In the letter, Marshall included footnotes that referenced my Fauci-Forbes columns.
On Friday, January 14th at 5:00 pm ET, NIH produced Fauci’s unredacted ethics/financial disclosures from 2019 and 2020 subject to Sen. Marshall’s demand letter. The 2020 disclosures had never been released and only heavily redacted 2019 disclosures were previously released.
Working through the night, I distilled the 178 pages of disclosure and published the breaking investigation at Forbes on January 15, 2022, disclosures show Dr. Fauci’s household made $1.7 million in 2020, including income, royalties, travel perks and investment gains.
Our findings included:
- Net worth: The Fauci household net worth rivaled $11 million.
- Earnings and gains: Salaries, benefits, royalties, investment gains in the Fauci household exceeded $1.7 million in 2020.
- Fauci’s wife: Christine Grady, the chief bioethicist at NIH, made $234,284 in 2020 (and by 2021 she outearned the U.S. vice president).
- Royalties: Fauci made between $100,000 and $1 million as an editor and board member of McGraw-Hill.
- Awards: In 2021, Fauci was awarded a $1 million prize for “speaking truth to power” from the Dan David Foundation in Israel.
Over the last 14-months of investigation, here is a sample of our findings on Fauci’s finances.
Income: Dr. Anthony Fauci was the highest paid federal employee each of the last three years 2019-2021. He earned $417,608 in 2019 and $434,312 in 2020 and $456,028 in FY2021. He is the director of the National Institute for Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
In the previous decade, Fauci made $3.6 million in salary (2010-2019). His salary has increased significantly since 2018, when it was $399,600.
However, Fauci’s colleagues on the White House Coronavirus Task Force made far less than he.
Vice President Mike Pence chaired the Task Force, and made $235,100. Fauci’s Task Force colleague Dr. Deborah Birx earned $305,972. Four-star generals make $178,000 per year. Speaker Nancy Pelosi earns $223,500, and U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts makes $286,700.
Again, Fauci is not the only federal employee in his household. Fauci’s wife, Christine Grady, made $238,900.
So, when you add up the cost of the two salaries and tack on the taxpayer funded benefits at 30-percent, the two Fauci’s cost taxpayers $900,000 per year. Not bad for a pair of public servants.
Because of our research, we know now how Fauci became the top-paid federal employee.
Fauci got a permanent pay hike in December 2004, during the George W. Bush administration, for his “biodefense research activities.” His pay raise was justified because of his increased workload post-9/11 responding to bioterrorism threats and to prevent the next pandemic, his bosses said.
Fauci’s permanent pay raise was to “appropriately compensate him for the level of responsibility… especially as it relates to his work on biodefense research activities,” the letter requesting the raise states.
Critics have said that Fauci was funding research that created pandemic pathogens in labs that, if leaked or if fell into the wrong hands, could create the very pandemic they were trying to prevent.
Retirement pension: With 55 years of service as a federal employee so far, we estimate that Fauci’s retirement package will be around $355,000 per year, the largest ever in American history.
Federal employees who have served as long as Fauci has can retire and earn “80 percent of [their] high-three average salary, plus credit for [their] sick leave,” according to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.
While Fauci hasn’t said he’s retiring, if he were to leave now, the payout based on his last three years of salary — $399,625 in 2018, $417,608 in 2019 and $434,312 in 2020 and $456,028 in 2021 — would calculate to be around $355,000 because he’s also eligible for an annuity.
If Fauci had retired at the end of 2020, he would get a federal pension of $348,786 a year, plus cost-of-living increases ($1,307,948/3 x 80 percent = $348,786).
His annuity would also pay him “2 percent of [their] high-3 average salary for each year,” adding at least another $6,975 a year.
So, on day one in retirement, Fauci will be earning nearly $1,000 per day — paid to stay home for the rest of his life.
America’s top PR expert: Cast as the country’s top doctor, Fauci was more like a top public relations bureaucrat. This role of Fauci needs a lot more scrutiny.
During the first 18-months of the pandemic, Fauci was the main spokesman for the entire U.S. federal health agencies, participating in nearly 400 television, radio, podcast, and online interviews, including lectures, panel discussions, speeches, and press conferences between Jan. 1, 2020, and June 15, 2021.
Fauci participated in so many interviews for such a long time that he may have blurred the lines between publicity, propaganda, public affairs, and his positions as the director of the NIAID and the chief medical advisor to the president.
When did Fauci have time to “follow the science?”
Since 1913, the Gillett Amendment expressly limits the government’s interaction with the public by barring the “publicity man” or “propagandist,” i.e. taxpayer dollars must be used to inform the public, and not to manufacture public opinion. “Appropriated funds may not be used to pay a publicity expert unless specifically appropriated for that purpose,” the law states.
Fauci was financially rewarded for his PR activities when he received the $1 million Dan David Foundation prize in Israel for ‘speaking truth to power’ during the Trump years.
The NIH has refused to produce Fauci’s job description subject to our FOIA request. Is public affairs in his job description? Has Fauci ever requested a legal opinion on his PR efforts?
Dr. Anthony Fauci’s employment, ethics disclosures, financial disclosures, and royalties have always been a black box.
OpenTheBooks.com is shining a white-hot spotlight.