While the specific details of an individual federal employee’s retirement benefit are exempt from public disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the formula used to determine the amount is public, as are key details, including annual salary and years of service.
The nonprofit’s auditors arrived at the figure by using the known formula, salary data, and number of years of service for Fauci, who is the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) at the National Institutes for Health (NIH).
Fauci will have been a government employee for 59 years and be 85 years of age if he retires in January 2025. Under the present rules for federal compensation, his annual salary at retirement will be nearly $530,000, according to the OTB calculations.
He presently is paid $456,028 in annual salary compensation, making him the highest-paid employee on the federal payroll. His salary exceeds those of the president, the vice president, the heads of federal departments, senators and representatives, and the justices of the Supreme Court.
Fauci didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.
“If it wasn’t already clear enough, Dr. Fauci’s profound impact on our public health policies, economy, and public schools is reflected by this enormous pension,” Adam Andrzejewski, OTB’s president, told The Epoch Times. “At the end of the day, taxpayers helped fund this pension and guarantee all of it.”
Andrzejewski added that the generosity of federal compensation overall is excessive, noting: “When debating the pay, perks, and pension benefits for federal employees, everything needs to be on the table. Today, the average federal bureaucrat makes six figures, receives 44 days of paid time off, and has a very lucrative retirement pension.
“It’s tough for the private sector to compete with this benefit package.”
The Chicago-based nonprofit is the nation’s largest private repository of information about government spending, including salary and pension benefit data. The foundation has filed thousands of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and obtained data on more than $6 trillion in federal spending, the official checks of 49 of the 50 states, and the pay and pension information for 25 million government workers.
The OTB request sought “all employment contracts, modifications, and addendums” for Grady since assuming her present position, as well as “all confidentiality agreements/documents, conflicts of interest waivers or documents, ethics disclosures, and financial interest and/or economic interest disclosure documents.”
In addition, the FOIA request sought a copy of Grady’s current official job description. All federal employment positions are required by federal law and regulation to have an official position description that describes the specific duties and responsibilities for which the individual holding the position can be held accountable.
The OTB FOIA was acknowledged by NIH officials on April 28, which was the maximum of 20 days allowed by federal law for an agency to do so. Federal law also requires agencies to communicate a final determination on what documents, if any, they will provide in response to requests. But OTB told the court that the NIH had failed to do so by the May 26 deadline.
The NIH further failed to advise OTB of its potential administrative remedies and has produced none of the requested documents or explained which, if any, of the FOIA’s eight permitted exemption categories apply that would allow for the documents to be withheld.
As a result, the complaint asked the court to order the NIH to conduct a thorough search for all of the requested documents, to produce all such documents that aren’t subject to being withheld by a certain date, or to explain why doing so isn’t possible, and to provide what is known as a Vaughn Index describing each withheld document and why it was withheld, and to pay Open the Books the legal costs of the litigation.
Not all of Fauci’s income is received from federal taxpayers, however, as was first reported by The Epoch Times. He also received 23 secret royalty payments of undisclosed amounts between 2010 and 2020 from entities outside of the federal government that NIH refuses to identify. The 23 payments were part of an estimated $350 million in royalty payments received by more than 1,600 NIH officials, scientists, and researchers, according to OTB.
Collins received 14 such payments, while Fauci’s top deputy at NIAID, Clifford Lane, received eight payments, according to OTB.
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