RFK Jr.-Linked Nonprofit Sold Access to HHS Officials, Report Says

If confirmed, the arrangement would raise questions about whether a federal ethics framework covering informal access brokering by nonprofit groups linked to cabinet officials is adequate.

A nonprofit organization with organizational ties to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Solicited payments from private companies in exchange for access to senior agency officials at a scheduled event, according to a Bloomberg report published September 18, 2026.

The Bloomberg report, citing journalist John Tozzi, describes the group as having direct ties to Kennedy, who has led HHS since being confirmed by the Senate in February 2025. The specific dollar amounts solicited, the names of companies approached, and the identity of the HHS officials involved were not fully detailed in the publicly available summary of the report as of publication time.

What is known is the core mechanism: a third-party nonprofit, not a registered lobbying firm, offered fee-based access to government officials. That distinction matters legally. Under the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995, entities that spend more than 20 percent of their time on lobbying activities and meet a monetary threshold are required to register with Congress and disclose clients and fees. Whether this nonprofit meets that threshold is not established in the available source material.

HHS is the federal department overseeing agencies including the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Companies regulated by those agencies have direct financial interests in access to senior HHS leadership.

The Office of Government Ethics publishes standards of conduct for executive branch employees under 5 C.F.R. Part 2635, which restricts federal employees from using their public office for private gain. However, those rules govern the conduct of officials themselves, not the conduct of outside nonprofit groups that broker access. Whether Kennedy or any named HHS official participated in or had knowledge of the solicitation is not established in the available source material.

Access-for-fee arrangements by outside groups linked to federal officials have drawn congressional scrutiny in prior administrations from both parties. In 2014, the House Oversight Committee examined nonprofit entities associated with then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation over questions about donor access to State Department officials. In 2019, the same committee reviewed arrangements involving Trump administration officials and third-party event organizers. In neither case did those reviews alone produce formal legal findings without additional investigative steps.

The Federal Election Commission does not regulate nonprofit access-brokering unless the arrangement constitutes a contribution or expenditure connected to a federal election. The Department of Justice Public Integrity Section has jurisdiction over federal bribery and gratuity statutes under 18 U.S.C. Section 201, which prohibit giving anything of value to a public official to influence an official act. Whether any arrangement described in the Bloomberg report would meet that legal threshold is unknown based on currently available public records.

Kennedy's tenure at HHS has already drawn oversight attention on separate grounds. The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee has jurisdiction over HHS programs and holds subpoena authority to compel document production. As of the publication of this article, no committee hearing or subpoena specifically addressing this nonprofit arrangement has been publicly announced.

The nonprofit's name, its legal registration status, its Form 990 filings with the IRS, and any Lobbying Disclosure Act registrations it may hold are the documents that would most directly clarify the group's legal obligations and financial relationships. Those records are publicly searchable through the IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search database and the Senate Office of Public Records LDA database. This publication searched both databases using terms available from the Bloomberg report summary; a definitive match was not identified prior to publication.

What remains unknown: the specific fee amounts solicited, which companies were approached, which HHS officials were offered as access points, whether those officials had advance knowledge of the arrangement, and whether the nonprofit has filed required disclosures with either the IRS or Congress. The documents that would answer those questions are the nonprofit's IRS Form 990, any LDA filings under the group's name, and internal HHS communications, which would require either voluntary disclosure or a congressional or judicial demand to become public.