Fauci Household Got $3.5M Wealthier in First Year After Retirement

As he hit speaker circuit, wife Dr. Christine Grady remained NIH’s chief bioethicist.

Controversial National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Dr. Anthony Fauci left the federal government as America’s highest paid bureaucrat with a final salary of $480,654. That’s tens of thousands more than the President of the United States, a historic number that triggered a similarly unprecedented pension.

Well, he’s doing even better post-retirement.

Financial disclosures reveal that Fauci and his wife’s combined financial assets kept climbing by more than $3.5 million in 2023, to just over $15 million total. Most of that growth—$3.3 million—came from Fauci’s accounts.

View the financial disclosures obtained exclusively by Open the Books.

Fauci is married to Dr. Christine Grady, who remained the chief bioethicist at the National Institutes of Health, collecting a taxpayer-funded salary of $263,005 in 2024. At the beginning of April 2025, she and several other NIH employees close to Fauci were fired or reassigned to the Indian Health Service as new HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy reshapes the agency.

And although it’s been universally reported that the so-called “America’s Doctor” retired at the end of 2022, new records obtained by Open the Books reveal that Fauci actually retired on January 6, 2023. Why did Fauci, the NIH, and resultantly, the media, consistently represent that he retired at the end of 2022— even to Congress? What difference does less than a week make?

BACKGROUND

Open the Books first reported that the Fauci-Grady household wealth (at least from the accounts they’re required to disclose), soared during the time of “peak Covid.” Before the pandemic, in January 2019, reported assets stood at $7.6 million. By December 31, 2021, that number had spiked to $12.6 million, even as much of the American economy had been hobbled by draconian lockdown policies.

MONEY MATTERS

Although new financial documents showing Fauci’s financial gains through 2023 do not indicate where or how the money was made, they do reveal some interesting clues. Notably, one of Fauci's accounts received five large deposits over the course of the year, worth over $1.15 million in total:

• April 13: $100,000

• May 1: $100,000

• June 15: $100,000

• September 29: $150,000

• November 30: $700,000

Returns from Fauci’s New York Times bestselling biography On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service, released in June 2024, may explain some of these deposits. He also took a position at Georgetown University as a Distinguished University Professor in July 2023; it is yet unknown what he’s paid for that post. Financial disclosures also show he continued collecting royalties from McGraw Hill Publishers.

FLASHBACK: Open the Books first reported Fauci’s ties with the textbook publisher back in 2022, noting he edited medical textbook Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine. His post as an associate editor at the company had been approved by NIH while he was employed by taxpayers and acted as the face of public health guidance during Covid. Are his public policy instincts affecting their materials?

Some deposits could also be explained through various speaking events, also delineated on the financial documents. Events include:

• The National Association of Chain Drug Stores, a trade association. Fauci spoke at their annual meeting in April 2023.

• American Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), a trade association for the insurance industry. Fauci delivered a keynote speech at that event on June 13, 2023.

• World Quant, a quantitative asset management firm.

• Japan Medical Congress, a major conference held in Japan every four years.

• Four events with Eminent Series, a group that holds speaker series with prominent people.

He received two prizes: Columbia University’s Calderone Prize, which comes with a medal and $50,000, and the National Academy of Medicine’s Lienhard Prize, which comes with a medal and $40,000. And he also was awarded honoraria to give talks at several universities: George Washington University, Princeton University, Wayne State University, Washington University (at their commencement ceremony), and two talks at Weill Cornell Medicine.

DR. GRADY’S ROLE

Financial documents obtained for this analysis were filed by Fauci’s wife, Dr. Christine Grady, who continued to serve as chief of the NIH Bioethics Department until April 2025.

Grady conducted research on ethics in clinical research design, with a focus on clinical trial recruitment and informed consent.

Much of Grady’s work is academic, and she tends to keep a low public profile. Open the Books attempted to create a clearer picture of her work activities during COVID through our comprehensive report on all of her public statements from 2020-2022.

Our research proves she was a major figure in her husband’s heavy-handed COVID response, conducting many public interviews with him during the pandemic. Each has often credited the other for influencing their own work.

We also know that the two were not required to submit a nepotism waiver. From our previous reporting:

It’s difficult to know where Anthony Fauci ends and Christine Grady begins. Here’s how Tony Fauci described Grady’s influence on his public policy decisions:

“I've benefited greatly from this partnership of overlapping interest and common interest. So, a lot of the things that I do with regard to the development of vaccines, the development of therapies, being involved with outbreaks and pandemics, have ethical overtones to them. I can say that I am very blessed to be living with someone who is very likely, most people think, one of the most outstanding ethicists in the world. To have her in the house -- you know, as a consultant on ethical issues—is pretty advantageous.”

So, the Faucis lived a conflict of interest at the breakfast table, the office, and back home around the dinner table. However, NIH has never acknowledged this.

In fact, NIH forced our organization to file two federal lawsuits with the public-interest law firm Judicial Watch as our lawyers to finally bring transparency to the Fauci/Grady job descriptions, conflict of interest documents, financial and ethics disclosures, contracts, and other documents.

…Yet, no nepotism waivers were produced, no acknowledgement of conflicting interests, and no records documenting violations of federal ethics policy.

Now, we know post-retirement Fauci was attending functions where he was mingling with and being compensated by industry movers and shakers, from which Grady indirectly benefited. What, if any, impact did their private dealings have on public health, research funding or policy guidance?

FAUCI’S FREE SECURITY DETAIL

During the time covered by these new financials, Fauci was also enjoying taxpayer-funded security from the U.S. Marshals. The initial contract, which Open the Books and journalist Jordan Schachtel revealed in November last year, was worth $15 million in protection from January 2023 to September 2024. The money covered, in part:

· Salaries and benefits for deputies and administrative personnel assigned to Fauci’s protective detail

• Costs related to transporting Fauci

• Law enforcement equipment

President Trump ended further public spending on Fauci’s security detail, along with that of former national security advisor John Bolton, shortly after taking office in January 2025, stating: “They all made a lot of money. They can hire their own security, too.”

Taking a look back in recent history, Fauci’s consistently said he stepped down from his role at the end of 2022, and the protection from Marshals began in January 2023. Was there a gap where he was left unprotected? It turns out there wasn’t. He delayed his official separately explicitly to ensure these benefits would be delivered.

WHEN DID AMERICA’S DOCTOR ACTUALLY RETIRE?

Fauci’s Application for Immediate Retirement, obtained via Freedom of Information Act request, states that his date of final separation from federal service is January 6, 2023, contrary to all news reports. Emails also obtained via FOIA indicate that on December 27, 2022, Fauci spoke with then-NIH director Lawrence Tabak to change his date of retirement.

During the January 8, 2024 closed door testimony with the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, Fauci and his lawyer both stated Fauci retired at the end of 2022

In the above transcripts from a closed-door Select Subcommittee testimony on January 8, 2024, Fauci states he retired at the end of 2022. Likewise, his lawyer David Schertler stated the same in the same testimony.

In the above statement during a Select Subcommittee Congressional hearing on June 3, 2024, Fauci again states he retired from Federal service in December 2022.

Similarly, the New York Times published an essay and the NIH itself published an article both stating Fauci retired in December 2022. There is no article that states otherwise.

His emails with Lawrence Tabak and an NIH Human Resources specialist make clear why he stayed longer, however—he was waiting for the Memorandum of Understanding between NIH and the U.S. Marshall’s Service (USMS) to be processed, guaranteeing him taxpayer-funded security after he left the federal government.

Emails between Lawrence Tabak and Fauci discussing changing his retirement date. See the final line of Tabak’s email. OGC means “Office of General Counsel,” the Health and Human Services legal team, MOU is “Memorandum of Understanding” and USMS is “U.S. Marshals Service.”

It is unclear why Fauci lied about this simple fact, given he personally weighed in on changing the date in order to ensure he received more taxpayer benefits. It’s also unclear whether he did any of his core duties during the extra six days in the federal government.