Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the president’s nominee to run the Department of Health and Human Services, confirmed in federal documents he had parted ways with his nonprofit Children’s Health Defense.
“Know that it has been one of my greatest privileges and honors to lead this group over all these years. I am confident that the group under your and the Board’s leadership will continue to do outstanding work defending the health and rights of children,” he wrote in the letter.
In the federal documents, he also pledged to keep his distance from matters involving Children’s Health Defense unless approved in line with executive branch ethics standards.
As of Jan. 23, the organization’s website listed Kennedy as its former board chair and founder. The Epoch Times has reached out to Children’s Health Defense for comment.
In addition, Kennedy said he would resign from the law firm J W Howard Attorneys and terminate his partnership with his law firm, Kennedy & Madonna, LLP, once confirmed, offering similar pledges in regard to roles with the law firm Morgan & Morgan, PA, the law firm Wisner Baum, and the publisher Skyhorse Publishing Inc.
He also said he would divest his interests in various entities, as well as ongoing vaccine-related lawsuits, before taking his role with the federal government, saying he would either forfeit them or receive payments for amounts owed before assuming his new position.
The Senate’s finance committee will hold a hearing on Kennedy’s nomination on Jan. 29 at 10 a.m.
Earlier examinations of other Trump nominees have faced attempted or actual delays due to paperwork concerns. Senate Democrats sought unsuccessfully to postpone energy secretary nominee Chris Wright’s initial hearing, saying that they had not received his ethics agreement, financial disclosures, and other documents. The Senate’s energy committee approved his nomination on Jan. 23, bringing him closer to confirmation by the full Senate.
The nominee’s income included a $326,056 salary from Children’s Health Defense, which he chaired beginning in 2015, and which advocates for vaccine safety. Kennedy also received $451,000 in consulting fees for various books by Skyhorse, owned by Tony Lyons, and a $600,000 advance for a Skyhorse title by his wife, actress Cheryl Hines, entitled “My Shade of Crazy: A Memoir.”
The disclosures also list millions in unreceived advances for multiple books.
Kennedy’s ethics agreement also addresses the financial interests of his wife, Cheryl Hines. Hines is famous for playing the wife and, later, ex-wife of Larry David on HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” which stars David as a version of himself.
The agreement states her beauty products firm, Hines & Young, LLC, will cease sales of cosmetics, in line with a pledge that members of his family will not have financial interests tied to that sector and a variety of other industries, ranging from communications media to software to utilities.
