Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Trump’s pick to be health secretary, is keeping his financial stake in major litigation against Merck over a widely used vaccine given to young people, according to ethics records made public Wednesday and court documents. That conflict of interest could raise questions for lawmakers as Mr. Kennedy aims to run agencies that regulate the drug maker.
The ethics records said Mr. Kennedy would continue to collect fees for cases in which he referred clients to Wisner Baum, a law firm suing Merck over Gardasil, a vaccine that protects against the human papillomavirus, or HPV, and is administered to adolescents to prevent cervical and other cancers later in life.
The arrangement has earned Mr. Kennedy, one of the nation’s fiercest vaccine critics, more than $2.5 million in recent years, according to records filed with federal election officials for his presidential run and with the Office of Government Ethics as part of the confirmation process.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Kennedy did not respond to a request for comment.
The first of many lawsuits claiming that young people were harmed by the vaccine is on trial in Los Angeles Superior Court. Mr. Kennedy has used X, the social media platform, to promote the claims; in 2022 he posted a video to recruit additional plaintiffs. Merck said the allegations have no merit.
In the ethics records, Mr. Kennedy wrote that he is entitled to receive 10 percent of fees “awarded in contingency fee cases referred to the firm.” The records, which noted that he is not a lawyer in any of the cases, said he would retain a financial interest in cases even if confirmed, as long as the cases do not involve the government, such as those brought through the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.
Wisner Baum has paid Mr. Kennedy about $856,000 in 2024 and $1.6 million the year before, financial records filed with the government show. It was not clear from the records how much of that money came from cases involving Merck. Mr. Kennedy has also worked with Wisner Baum on other litigation, including cases related to the pesticide Roundup.
Agreements like the one submitted by Mr. Kennedy and signed by the Office of Government Ethics are based on criminal laws that prevent federal officials from self-dealing and regulations guarding against the appearance of conflicts of interest.
The document outlining what Mr. Kennedy’s obligations would be is not clear on the degree to which he would need to sidestep matters related to Merck or the Gardasil vaccine, said Richard Painter, a University of Minnesota law professor and former chief White House ethics lawyer. He said the arrangement appears to be highly problematic, as any action Mr. Kennedy oversaw related to Merck could appear to be motivated by his financial interest in a handsome settlement.
“I think he’d have to recuse a huge amount to not appear to be extracting money from Merck,” Mr. Painter said. “And it almost looks like extortion.”
Mr. Painter said he believed that senators should decline to confirm Mr. Kennedy until he resolves the matter. Republican senators have been awaiting Mr. Kennedy’s financial and ethics disclosures before scheduling his confirmation hearings.
On Tuesday, Senator Mike Crapo, the chairman of the Finance Committee, told a reporter the delay in receiving them meant that the committee will not hold a hearing for Mr. Kennedy next week, as Mr. Crapo had hoped. It is unclear whether the release of the forms will change that.
Susanne Craig contributed reporting.
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