During intense interrogation on Thursday by the members of the Senate Health Committee on his plan to maintain financial participation in the dispute on important vaccines, Robert F. Kennedy said that he would give his rights to taxes that could flow from it.
It seems to be an inversion of the details of the government’s ethical agreement which he presented for his hearings of confirmation of the Senate to become the secretary of the nation.
Just last week, the ethical agreement that he provided to the senators declared that he would have maintained a participation in the continuous dispute, which means that if confirmed, it could receive payments while supervising the vast US health bureaucracy that includes the regulation of pharmaceutical companies. The financial dissemination specified that Kennedy would have collected commissions from Wisner Baum, a law firm for personal injury based in Los Angeles.
Kennedy said he sent hundreds of customers to the company, that he is sung to the drug producer Merck for the statements that young people were injured by the company’s gardening vaccine, aimed at preventing cervical cancer caused by the human papillomavirus or from the HPV. In the ethical declaration, he reported: “I am entitled to 10 percent of the commissions assigned” in the cases that referred to Wisner Baum.
Legislators who considered his confirmation of Wednesday and Thursday denounced the financial agreement, with many democrats who suggest that he represented an intrinsic conflict because he would be to earn financially from the decisions he made as a health secretary who involved pharmaceutical companies.
“I gave all my rights to any commission in that cause,” Kennedy said to senators on Thursday. To the question to elaborate, Katie Miller, spokesman for Mr. Kennedy, said he “did not personally keep taxes”.
But he did not answer further questions that the agreement with the law firm to pay to Mr. Kennedy an emergency commission of 10 % – depending on the outcome of any agreement or verdict for cause – would be somehow modified or revised To redirect any payment. It is possible that it can be placed in a limited liability company or limited liability, or be addressed to a family member. The funds may also be dispersed with other company lawyers. (Conor Kennedy, son of Mr. Kennedy, is a lawyer by Wisner Baum.)
The US Office of the government’s ethics, which tends to approve the chords of the nominated, and Wisner Baum did not immediately answer the questions on Thursday. The ethical office reminded candidates for the government who must cancel substantial changes to their agreements.
Last Wednesday, a widely widespread clip of the Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democratic of Massachusetts, outlined the ways in which Mr. Kennedy could influence the causes.
During his questions, Mr. Kennedy would not have committed himself to moving away from any proceeds from the cases of Gardasil, saying that he had respected the ethical rules.
“Kennedy can kill access to vaccines and earn millions of dollars while he does it,” said Mrs. Warren. “Children could die, but Robert Kennedy can continue to collect.”
Thursday, in the second hearing, Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat of Washington, collected the wire, speaking of how effective the vaccine against HPV was in preventing cervical cancer.
Have you “said that in reality the risk of cervical cancer increases. Are you for those statements?” Signora Murray asked.
Mr. Kennedy did not answer directly, saying that the question was before a jury this week. Wisner Baum’s lawyers represent a young lawsuit that claims to suffer from a blood circulation disorder after receiving the vaccine against HPV in a process that started this month in California.
Senator Tim Kaine, a Democrat of Virginia, continued the line of questions on Thursday, citing a series of positive studies on Gardasil, which according to him is done in Virginia. He asked the decision of Mr. Kennedy to maintain an interest in the dispute.
“How do people who need to trust in federal vaccines programs trust you to be independent and based on science when you get significant funding if the legal actions against vaccine producers are successful?” Signor Kaine asked.
It was the first time that Mr. Kennedy publicly revealed that he was giving up on taxes.
The public registers show that Mr. Kennedy has earned around $ 2.5 million from his work with Wisner Baum since 2022.
After Senator Warren focused on the questions about the potential conflicts that involve the financial interests of Mr. In cases against drug producers, Kennedy, Wisner Baum issued a declaration in which he stated that the 2.5 million dollars in payments were linked to the work of Mr. Kennedy on cases involving Weed Killer RoundP and other fires. None of this amount, said the company, was linked to the litigation on vaccines.