Barack Obama spent eight years lecturing America about inequality and the billionaire class.
Now his foundation is writing $740,000 checks to his own inner circle – on land the city of Chicago handed over for $10.
Valerie Jarrett – Obama's longest-serving White House advisor and the woman who introduced Michelle Robinson to Barack Obama in 1991 – just got exposed as the highest-paid presidential foundation CEO in America.
Obama Foundation Salaries Topped Every Presidential Center in America
Federal tax filings show the Obama Foundation paid Jarrett $740,000 in 2024 – more than the CEOs of the Bush, Reagan, Carter, and Clinton foundations. And Jarrett is just the start.
Six of the foundation's ten highest-paid executives previously held senior roles in the Obama White House or campaign. David Simas, Obama's former White House political director, pulled in up to $626,000 annually running the foundation from 2017 through 2020. Adewale Adeyemo – a senior Obama official who later became Biden's deputy Treasury Secretary – collected roughly $540,000 during his foundation tenure. Former White House chief of staff to Michelle Obama, Christina Tchen, and public engagement official Anne Filipic each earned around $400,000 annually. Michael Strautmanis, another White House aide, has earned over $300,000 per year.
The Obama Foundation's total payroll has more than doubled – from $18.5 million in 2018 to $43.7 million in 2024.
Illinois GOP Chair Kathy Salvi didn't mince words. "Illinois Democrats are truly living their best lives – making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to help design the ugliest building in Chicago," she told Fox News. "Their jaw-dropping salaries prove that Illinois' culture of corruption is alive and well."
Obama Presidential Center Got Chicago Parkland for $10 and Still Left Taxpayers Exposed
Here's the part that should make your blood boil.
Chicago handed the Obama Foundation 19.3 acres of Jackson Park – the city's equivalent of Central Park – for $10. A 99-year deal. The condition: the foundation would fund a $470 million endowment to protect taxpayers if the project ever collapsed.
They put in $1 million.
That's not a typo. Out of $470 million promised, the Obama Foundation deposited exactly $1 million – 0.21% of the pledge – at the 2021 groundbreaking and hasn't added a single dollar since.
University of Chicago law professor Richard Epstein called it a "public calamity." His assessment to Fox News was blunt: putting a million dollars into a $400 million endowment and calling it funded "gets you in jail as a securities matter." Without a real endowment, the foundation will scramble every year to cover $30 million in operating costs – and when the fundraising runs dry, Chicago taxpayers are on the hook.
The math is getting uglier. Construction costs ballooned from an initial $330 million estimate to at least $850 million. The foundation's cash reserves dropped nearly $80 million in a single year to $116.5 million, while it owes $234 million in outstanding construction bills. Another $201 million depends on conditional donor pledges that may never materialize.
The Biggest Grift Nobody in the Media Will Call By Its Name
This is what the permanent political class does.
They spend years in government – then cash out at the nonprofit their old boss controls, on public land their old boss's allies gave away, paying themselves rates that would embarrass a Fortune 500 CEO.
The Obama Foundation told Fox News that executive salaries "are based on competitive market rates." They pointed to the Rockefeller and Ford foundations – organizations with multibillion-dollar endowments actually generating interest income. The Obama Foundation's endowment has $1 million in it.
The center opens in June. Obama released a promotional video this week calling it "not a monument to the past" but "a living destination for people who refuse to accept the status quo."
What it actually is: an $850 million monument to political patronage, built on public land Chicago gave away for pocket change, staffed with Obama loyalists paying themselves Washington consultant rates, backed by a taxpayer safety net that exists almost entirely on paper.
Your conservative friends already knew the Obama machine treated America like a personal piggy bank. The tax filings just confirmed it.
Sources:
- Michael Dorgan, "Valerie Jarrett earned $740K as Obama insiders filled top roles during $850M presidential center build," Fox News, March 11, 2026.
- Fox News Digital, "Obama Presidential Center deposits just $1M into $470M reserve fund aimed to protect taxpayers," Fox News, September 30, 2025.
- A.D. Quig, "Salaries for top staffers at Obama Foundation are outpacing their counterparts at other presidential centers," Chicago Tribune, September 6, 2022.