Fauci’s wealth doubled to $15 MILLION as Americans faced lockdowns, job loss during pandemic

The financial details come from 141 pages of disclosure forms obtained by the watchdog group Open the Books, which showed that Fauci, 84, made more than $3.5 million in 2023 alone—his first year in retirement.

Before leaving his post, Fauci had the highest salary of any government bureaucrat, taking home $480,654 in his final year of service. Though he had stated in congressional testimony that he stepped down at the end of 2022, records show his final separation date was actually January 6, 2023.

“I came back to the NIH in 1972, and I started off as a senior investigator to a section head in one of the labs to the chief of the laboratory of immunoregulation in 1980, a position I held until I stepped down at the end of 2022,” he told the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic last year.

An email obtained by the watchdog group shows Fauci was informed in late 2022 that his retirement would officially take effect in early January 2023. The delay in official processing was due to the government’s outdated paper filing system, which has since seen some reform.

“Dr. Fauci’s assets soared during the worst of the draconian Covid lockdowns while families and small businesses struggled through school closures and lost income,” Open the Books CEO John Hart said in a statement. “Now it’s clear the cash kept coming during his first year of ‘retirement.’ He was rubbing elbows with groups like [America’s Health Insurance Plans] flanked by taxpayer-funded security — even as his wife remained the top bioethicist at [the National Institutes of Health].”

Fauci’s post-retirement income isn’t fully detailed in the records, though several six-figure payments are listed: $100,000 in April, May, and June of 2023; $150,000 in September; and $700,000 in November.

During this period, Fauci spoke to groups like the National Association of Chain Drug Stores and America’s Health Insurance Plans. He also appeared at events hosted by World Quant, Japan Medical Congress, and Eminent Series.

In March 2023, Fauci sold his memoir, On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service to Penguin Random House for $5 million,

That deal aligned with a congressional memo alleging Fauci "prompted" a scientific paper that helped discredit the lab leak theory early in the pandemic. A new White House Covid webpage recently blamed Fauci for his role in the pandemic.

“‘The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2’ publication — which was used repeatedly by public health officials and the media to discredit the lab leak theory — was prompted by Dr. Fauci to push the preferred narrative that COVID-19 originated naturally,” the website noted.

In July 2023, Fauci took on a role as a distinguished professor at Georgetown University.

His wife, Dr. Christine Grady, continued working at NIH’s bioethics department through early 2025, earning $243,749 in 2023. In the time since, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has moved to remove many NIH employees linked to Fauci, who had been the focus of Kennedy’s 2021 book criticizing public health officials.

After retiring, Fauci received taxpayer-funded US Marshals protection—until President Trump rescinded it. Security costs were to roughly $15 million from January 2023 to September 2024, according to Open the Books and journalist Jordan Schachtel.