FOIAs show the doctor’s recent salary.
QUICK FACTS:
- Chief White House Medical Adviser Anthony Fauci announced this week that he would be stepping down from his government positions in December of this year.
- In addition to leaving the White House, he will no longer be the head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), but he will leave with a hefty retirement fund.
- As one of the most well-compensated federal employees and with 55 years in office, Fauci can bring in “80 percent of [his] high-3 average salary,” according to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.
- Fauci’s salary from 2018, 2019, and 2020, according to recent disclosures, was $399,625, $417,608, and $434,312, respectively.
- Averaged and divided out to find 80%, that comes out to a total of $333,745 a year, plus cost-of-living increases, per freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests filed by the watchdog group.
HOW FAUCI COULD EARN EVEN MORE:
- It’s difficult to say what exactly Fauci’s salary will be because the data being used is for salary information up to 2020, with some estimates going even higher than the base mid-300s.
- Some information indicates that the years that came after were likely even more profitable for the NIH director: “Fauci’s unpublished FY2021 and FY2022 salaries are likely commensurate, if not higher than his 2020 salary,” watchdog group Open The Books stated in their analysis.
- “Therefore, his retirement pay would be closer to $347,500 a year,” explained the group, before going on to outline the two percent bump in annuity payments some federal employees are eligible for after 10 years of service.
- “If he leaves at the end of this month, that figure is likely closer to $8,575 a year in annuity payments, assuming his salary did not go down in 2021,” explained Open The Books.
BACKGROUND:
- Fauci’s departure from the White House and NIH comes on the heels of NIH Director Francis Collins stepping down after questions about the agency’s gain-of-function research in China.
- Several Republicans, including Republican Sens. Rand Paul (KY) and John Kennedy (LA), have said they will still go after Fauci if they take control of Congress later this year.
- Kennedy said in a recent interview that unless the doctor flees the country to take asylum elsewhere, he will be “spending a lot of time in front of a congressional committee if Republicans take back control.”
