Following the Money

Redactions and Secrecy at the National Institutes of Health

Adam Andrzejewski Courtesy of the Conservative Partnership Institute

“At OpenTheBooks.com, we have a simple mission,” Adam Andrzejewski said. “It’s Every Dime, Online, in Real Time. Our vision is to post online every dime taxed and spent at every level of government across the country.”

In a recent episode of “American Thought Leaders,” host Jan Jekielek sits down with Adam Andrzejewski, CEO and founder of the government watchdog organization OpenTheBooks.com, to discuss government spending. In particular, they look at Dr. Anthony Fauci’s contract and financials—he earns more than the president of the United States—including Fauci’s hidden contract with the government and the reluctance of his employer, the National Institutes of Health, to disclose the earnings of its scientists, who receive royalties from third parties, such as pharmaceutical companies, for co-inventions.

Jan Jekielek: Recently, you made some headlines after being removed as a Forbes columnist when you published a report about Dr. Anthony Fauci’s personal finances. Before we go there, I want to talk about OpenTheBooks.com and the amazing work you do.

Adam Andrzejewski: At OpenTheBooks.com, we have a simple mission. It’s Every Dime, Online, in Real Time. Our vision is to post online every dime taxed and spent at every level of government across the country. Last year, we filed 47,000 Freedom of Information Act requests, the most in American history. We successfully captured $12 trillion worth of government spending. And we do this so people can follow the money and hold their elected officials accountable for tax and spending decisions.

Mr. Jekielek: Did you just say that last year you filed 47,000 requests?

Mr. Andrzejewski: Yes, 47,000 FOIA requests. For the first time in our nation’s history, we’ve captured virtually every single public employee’s salary and pension record at every level. In school districts, for example, we have the salary payroll file displayed online. You can search those salaries for free from our website.

Mr. Jekielek: Why is this important?

Mr. Andrzejewski: The American experiment is premised on the individual. We instituted a government to secure our rights, and our Founders knew the power of transparency and wrote it into the Constitution. Article 1, Section 9 states that an account of the receipts and expenditures of all public money shall be published from time to time. With the internet and the age of big data, we have the capacity to open the books and post every dime online. People should be able to hold their elected officials accountable for tax-and-spend decisions. At OpenTheBooks.com we’re empowering people to hold their officials accountable.

Mr. Jekielek: Tell me a few of your other unusual finds.

Mr. Andrzejewski: I’ve got a great team of auditors, and we realized in 2019 that the human waste reports in San Francisco came with latitude and longitude coordinates. So we did what any good watchdog organization would do and took that file. Over a nine-year period, there were 130,000 cases of human waste publicly reported. We put that file on an interactive map, and the whole city was brown. That map trended on Twitter. I’m proud to say we reframed the homeless debate. It was a health catastrophe, and a picture tells a thousand words.

And when President Joe Biden claimed the Afghanistan withdrawal was a successful extraction of a military force, we showed the staggering cost of the abandoned military gear: 600,000 weapons, 75,000 military vehicles, and up to 16,000 night-vision devices left behind.

Mr. Jekielek: Tell the audience, what is FOIA?

Mr. Andrzejewski: The Freedom of Information Act is the statutory process that citizens use to capture information they already own as citizens.

Mr. Jekielek: What got you thinking about Dr. Anthony Fauci’s finances?

 Mr. Andrzejewski: I was training a new hire, and our federal payrolls were posted for 2019, the latest year available. I was looking at this in January 2021 and noticed Dr. Anthony Fauci was the top paid federal employee, out-earning everybody else, including the president. And I said to the trainee, “That’s your first piece. Ghost draft a thousand words. Let’s build it out from every angle. And let’s put it up at Forbes.” That’s what kicked off the investigation.

So we filed the FOIA request for information on his contract with all its amendments, modifications, and changes; his job description; his conflict of interest documents; his royalties, if any; and his ethics statements. The National Institutes of Health, Fauci’s employer, produced virtually nothing subject to that request. We sued them in federal court in October. They’ve still produced almost nothing, but they’ve admitted they’re holding 1,200 pages subject to that request.

So they’re engaging in expensive litigation paid for by taxpayers to keep those same taxpayers from learning how their tax dollars are being spent.

Mr. Jekielek: Given your knowledge, what, in general, are you expecting to see in these 1,200 pages?

Mr. Andrzejewski: On Dr. Fauci’s contract, we expect waivers for conflict of interest. One of the waivers may be with him and his wife, Christine Grady. Many people don’t know that Christine Grady is head of the Department of Bioethics at the NIH. Dr. Grady has stated that her team has issued COVID-19 studies from a bioethics standpoint, like the intersection between mask mandates and a loss of personal freedom.

There may be a conflict of interest here. They’re sitting at the bioethics table, but they’re also sitting at the same breakfast table at home. While Tony Fauci was running America’s response to COVID-19 from a health standpoint, his wife was setting the foundation on the bioethics studies. That lends itself to a lot of questions.

And here again, we advocate transparency. All those studies need to be published online for the American people. All of Dr. Fauci’s finances, which are public documents, should be immediately released by NIH. We shouldn’t have to engage in expensive litigation to open the books on Dr. Anthony Fauci or to call for the ethical studies from Christine Grady.

Mr. Jekielek: It almost sounds like a kind of a conspiracy? Where do you see that?

Mr. Andrzejewski: I brought you a physical example. Roughly 1,000 scientists are either currently employed or retired from the NIH. They can receive royalties of up to $150,000 per year from third parties, say pharmaceutical companies for co-inventions, and it’s perfectly legal. The NIH admit they owe us 3,000 pages worth of line-by-line royalties. Now, every single line could be a potential conflict of interest, especially during a pandemic. So we want to see that database. And on Feb. 1, NIH started producing, subject to our lawsuit, 300 pages a month of those royalties. Now I want to show everybody what they’ve produced. Here’s the first production, it’s 3,000 pages, and the only thing you can see on it is the scientist’s name, the NIH employee or retiree.

All the payments to the scientists are redacted. They’re blacked out. All the names of the companies paying the royalty are also blacked out. So basically you have 3,000 pages that are worthless for oversight.

That’s terrible precedent, and we need to sue on that basis.

Mr. Jekielek: You’ve started a substack because you no longer have a Forbes column. Is this where your future reports will be posted?

Mr. Andrzejewski: When Forbes canceled my column, I opened the substack column. Our first piece describes how fact-finding Fauci led to my cancellation at Forbes. It’s gotten more than a hundred thousand views, and nearly 6,000 people have subscribed to it. You can see it at substack.com, Open The Books.

Mr. Jekielek: How did this situation cause your column to be canceled? You’ve published quite a few hard-hitting pieces in the past.

Mr. Andrzejewski: The information I published was so sensitive to the NIH, Fauci’s employer, that two directors, two bureau chiefs, and two public relations officers took time out from protecting the nation during a pandemic to write a letter to Forbes, an organization that’s been around for 100 years, and basically said, “We don’t like Andrzejewski’s reporting.” They delivered a subliminal message, and Forbes got the message. Within 24 hours, I was told I couldn’t write about Dr. Anthony Fauci.

 The NIH needs to open the books on the Fauci family finances. They’ve admitted they’re holding 1,200 pages related to our Freedom of Information Act request from 15 months ago. These are public documents, and they need to come clean with the American people.

And here’s what we found. Dr. Anthony Fauci is the top paid federal employee and makes $456,000 a year. Christine Grady makes $238,000. If you add together their salaries, then tack on 30 percent for federal benefits, the two Faucis annually clean off more than $900,000 a year. His pension will likely be the largest in federal history. If it was up to NIH, we wouldn’t even know what the Faucis are making.

Mr. Jekielek: But all sorts of other officials in the government require the same kind of oversight, right?

Mr. Andrzejewski: There needs to be a lot of oversight at every level. And Congress isn’t doing its job. At OpenTheBooks.com, we’re taking on the responsibility to give that oversight to government spending.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.