EXCLUSIVE: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Takes Aim At Dr. Fauci In New Book On Pandemic-Era Policies

When the COVID-19 pandemic took root, Dr. Anthony Fauci became the central focus of the federal government’s response to the health crisis. Dr. Fauci was no stranger to being in the limelight — as a physician with the National Institutes of Health (NIH), he has been a fixture in Washington for more than a half-century, including service as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984.

While many people have praised Dr. Fauci’s response to the ongoing crisis, he has also generated criticism — most notably from Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent environmental attorney and law professor who is also founder and chairman of Children's Health Defense, a nonprofit advocacy group that has generated controversy by questioning the efficacy of many vaccines in treating epidemics among children.

Kennedy has attracted more controversy during the pandemic for his comments on the value of vaccines, and in February Instagram shut down his account for "repeatedly sharing debunked claims about the coronavirus or vaccines." The Washington Post recently reported that "since the pandemic started, Children’s Health Defense has expanded the reach of its newsletter, which uses slanted information, cherry-picked facts and conspiracy theories to spread distrust of the COVID-19 vaccines."

Skyhorse Publishing has recently released Kennedy’s new book “The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health,” which calls into question Dr. Fauci’s record in Washington and his ties to the pharmaceutical industry and the Microsoft MSFT co-founder’s vaccination endeavors.

Benzinga recently spoke with Kennedy regarding his new book and Dr. Fauci’s impact on health care and the economy.

Why did you decide to write a book about Dr. Fauci?

I thought I was in a position to explain to people what was happening in the country. I think most Americans, particularly people from my political party, saw Tony Fauci at the beginning of the pandemic as this kind of reassuring avuncular science-based figure who had been an important public servant for many, many decades – and who was somebody that we could trust with our health and with our children.

And I have known Tony Fauci for a long time and I know better – Tony Fauci has transformed his agency into an incubator for pharmaceutical products, and he promotes pharma products and pharma profits. That's what he does. It has nothing to do with public health.

What exactly is the nature of Dr. Fauci’s relationship with the pharmaceutical companies?

Congress created his agency to do research in public health to find a cure for chronic diseases and infectious diseases. And as it turns out, Tony Fauci doesn't do that. What he does is develop drugs for the pharmaceutical industry, and then he partners with the industry in getting those drugs approved and promoted.

And, yes, his agency often takes patent rights in those drugs. He also assigns margin rights on the patents to his favorite deputies and his loyalists, which ensures their continued loyalty. For example, he has four of his employees who he designated to own pieces of the Moderna MRNA patent, and they will collect potentially $150,000 a year for life on top of their federal salaries and pensions. And his agency has claims on half of the mRNA vaccine patents. So, with all of these companies that are marketing mRNA vaccines, the NIH has claims on up to 50% of their royalties.

He does own patent rights to some of the pharmaceutical drugs that he has developed. But I'm pretty sure, although that whole process is very opaque. We've been able to determine that he owns a patent at least on one drug, an Interferon drug, that he got confronted with by Congress in 2004. And I think at that time, he could collect unlimited amounts of patent royalties. I believe that after that, it's likely that he's taking personal ownership of patents – there are many other ways that he can make money in his agency and also accumulate power, which I think is more of what he's interested in.

Outside of J. Edgar Hoover's reign at the FBI, has there ever been another Washington bureaucrat who has wielded so much federal power over such an extended period of time as Dr. Fauci?

None that I can think of who’s been in office for that period of time. I don't think there's been any federal bureaucrat in history who has wielded this much power – he’s effectively locked down the global economy and militarized and monetized the response to COVID, taking it out of the public health realm and made it a pretense for clamping down totalitarian controls and for enriching pharmaceutical companies.

And it hasn't just impacted this nation – his protocols are followed across Europe and essentially resulted in the controlled demolition of democracy across the planet. The alteration of government structures and governing structures is unprecedented in history globally. The Great Depression did something like this in terms of precipitating the collapse of democracy in Italy and Spain and the Weimer Republic, but what we're seeing now is even more impactful.

Your book makes mention about a meeting that Fauci had with Bill Gates in 2000. What was the nature of their partnership? And is he still consulting with Bill Gates?

I don't know how much they're consulting now. I know that 12 months into the pandemic, Bill Gates was saying that he spoke to Fauci several times a week.

The nature of their initial partnership, which began in the year 2000, when Gates summoned Fauci to his $187 million dollar mansion on the banks of Lake Washington near Seattle and proposed to him a partnership to pool their resources to maximize vaccination of every human being on the planet with a battery of new and existing vaccines. Their ambition was that by 2020 they'd be able to vaccinate every person on Earth.

Outside of Senators Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, most people on Capitol Hill don't seem to be that critical of Dr. Fauci. Why are so many people unwilling to challenge him?

Well, you know that pharma is a single biggest offender in lobbying dollars. And most of our elected representatives are really indentured servants to the pharmaceutical industry. And pharma has been able to grab his orthodoxy that has subsumed – particularly the Democratic members of Congress – where it's now becoming impermissible to criticize this particular brand of pharmaceutical product.

What has the reaction been to your book? And have you heard anything from Dr. Fauci or his loyalists about what you've published?

No, and the book has been heavily censored. There hasn't been a single review in any national newspaper, and the Internet companies are forbidding us from promoting the book. The big news organizations like the New York Times NYT will only publish certain advertisements on the book ends, so we've only bought one ad. And the bookstores like Barnes & Noble are essentially boycotting the book – there's slow walking, ordering minimal amounts of copies to make sure they are virtually always out.

We've been number one on the bestseller list over the last three-and-a-half weeks. And despite all the censorship, this book is a runaway bestseller. Even the publishing industry has repeatedly said, “We've never seen anything like this before – it's all word of mouth.”

Editor's note: Benzinga has reached out to Dr. Fauci's office for comment on Kennedy's book, but as of this writing has not received a response.

Photo: Gage Skidmore / Wikimedia Commons