Final week, President Trump introduced an nameless “patriot” had given a donation of $130 million — cash the president stated was for use to assist pay troops throughout the federal government shutdown.
There are questions in regards to the legality of a donation of this kind (the Anti-Deficiency Act prohibits federal companies from exceeding congressional appropriations or accepting voluntary companies). Over the weekend, The New York Instances recognized the nameless donor as Timothy Mellon, a reclusive railroad magnate and inheritor to the Gilded Age Mellon household fortune.
File: Timothy Mellon, seen outdoors an inspection prepare throughout a property tour in 1981. Actual date and site unknown.
AP picture
Mellon, 83, emerged as one of many high Republican donors solely prior to now few years, giving far much less within the a long time earlier than 2017.
Early in his grownup life, he held liberal views on race, the issue of revenue inequality and the atmosphere. As Mellon’s enterprise profession developed, he started to specific a robust antipathy for what he considered as intrusive authorities laws on enterprise. One turning level appears to be when he ran afoul of environmental regulators in Connecticut within the late Nineties over an airport he purchased.
He’s written a memoir and penned some opinion items that supply some perception into his political beliefs. Mellon wrote {that a} favourite quote of his got here from Winston Churchill: “Show me a young Conservative and I’ll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old Liberal and I’ll show you someone with no brains.”
Mellon didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Listed here are some numbers related to Mellon:
A minimum of $197 million: How a lot Mellon donated to Trump and Republicans within the 2024 election
Mellon could also be an obscure determine to the broader public, however he’s well-known in political circles for giving greater than nearly every other donor to Mr. Trump and different Republican committees through the 2024 election cycle — no less than $197 million, in accordance with Federal Election Fee data. The one one that gave extra was SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
He emerged on the political scene as a megadonor comparatively late in life. Over 20 years, from 1996 to 2017, he gave a complete of $350,000 in donations to political candidates. However within the 4 years between January 2020 and June 2024 he gave $227 million to federal candidates and political committees.
Final 12 months, Mellon made a $50 million donation to a Trump-affiliated tremendous PAC, one of many largest particular person contributions ever made public. That was one among a number of donations to the tremendous PAC through the 2024 election cycle, totaling round $150 million. He additionally contributed $13 million to the Sentinel Motion Fund, a brilliant PAC affiliated with the conservative Heritage Basis, which produced Undertaking 2025, the coverage blueprint the Trump administration has relied on in overhauling the federal authorities.
$25 million: How a lot Mellon gave to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential marketing campaign
Mellon additionally gave $25 million to assist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s 2024 presidential marketing campaign. Some speculated that Mellon was making an attempt to be a spoiler to assist Mr. Trump, whom he was additionally backing financially.
However final August, he wrote an article within the American Spectator explaining his assist for Kennedy. Mellon, it seems, is a COVID-19 vaccine skeptic. “I could not fathom how a ‘vaccine’ could be foisted on the general public with so little (if any) adequate testing.”
He started giving to Kennedy’s Kids’s Well being Protection, which promotes false details about vaccines, and later to the Tremendous PAC supporting Kennedy’s marketing campaign.
$14.1 billion: The Mellon household’s estimated wealth
340: The variety of bushes he lower down at a Connecticut airport he purchased
One defining episode for Mellon occurred after he bought an airport in Connecticut within the late Nineties. He lower down 340 bushes, arguing that they posed a hazard to pilots touchdown their planes. However state environmental regulators finally sued him and gained. He was ordered to pay tens of hundreds of {dollars} in damages.
$53 million: How a lot he donated to construct a border wall in Texas
In 2021, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott introduced Texas would construct its personal border wall and began his personal non-public fund to construct it. He made little progress — the Texas Tribune stated his effort had slowed after elevating just a little over $1 million, after which Mellon chipped in $53 million. The non-public and public effort was quietly dropped earlier this 12 months, because the GOP-led legislature defunded development in June, and the crowdfunding hyperlink disappeared in late Could, the Tribune reported. The state constructed about 65 miles of wall out of the 805 miles that Abbott deliberate, and it’s riddled with gaps as a result of many landowners don’t want the border wall on their land.
