Business
This mysterious billionaire and top Trump backer is behind a $130 million donation to pay troops during the government shutdown, report says
The mystery donor who offered $130 million to pay troops during the government shutdown is Timothy Mellon, sources told The New York Times on Saturday.
The extremely private billionaire is a top Republican backer and contributed $125 million to the Make America Great Again super PAC that supported Donald Trump during his presidential bid last year.
Trump announced the anonymous donation on Thursday, declining to name the benefactor, only saying that the individual was a “patriot” and a friend.
When asked about Mellon on Friday, Trump declined to identify him as the donor while speaking to reporters. He said the individual was “a great American citizen” and a “substantial man.”
“He doesn’t want publicity,” Trump said, according to The Times. “He prefer that his name not be mentioned which is pretty unusual in the world I come from, and in the world of politics, you want your name mentioned.”
The Pentagon told The Times it accepted the donation under the “general gift acceptance authority.”
But the donation may be in violation of the Antideficiency Act, which prevents federal agencies from spending more money than Congress allows or from using unpaid help that Congress hasn’t approved.
The Mellon family foundation did not respond to Fortune’s request for comment, and attempts by the Times to reach Mellon were unsuccessful.
Mellon’s fortune
Mellon founded the now-defunct railroad company Guilford Transportation Industries in 1981, but much of his wealth is from his grandfather, Andrew, who was Treasury secretary from 1921 to 1932. During this time, Andrew successfully campaigned to remove estate taxes so he could leave his fortune to his heirs.
Prior to working for the Treasury, Andrew accumulated his wealth in banking, industrials and investing in the early stages of companies.
The Mellon family was named one of America’s richest families by Forbes last year and has a combined net worth of just over $14 billion.
Although Timothy Mellon’s share of this wealth isn’t well understood, he said his net worth was about $700 million in 2014. The London Times estimated it to be about $1 billion last year, and a relative told Vanity Fair it was closer to $4.2 billion, adding that Mellon didn’t want people to know his true net worth.
Between 1996 and 2018, Mellon donated about $350,000 to political causes, according to the Wall Street Journal. But during the 2020 election, his political spending exploded, donating $60 million to Republican candidates, including $20 million to Trump.
In the 2024 cycle, Mellon donated a total of $165 million, according to campaign finance tracker OpenSecrets. This included $25 million to the political action committee American Values 2024 that supported Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign.
In Mellon’s self-published autobiography panam.captain from 2015, Kennedy is quoted as saying, “Tim Mellon is a maverick entrepreneur who embodies the most admirable qualities of what FDR called ‘American Industrial genius.’”
Government shutdown
Mellon’s donation comes as Trump has promised to pay military service members, immigration agents and law enforcement officials despite not having approval by lawmakers for money for their wages.
He signed an executive order this month ordering the Pentagon to use portions of research and development funds to cover troops’ salaries.
About 670,000 workers have been furloughed, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington-based think tank. And about 730,000 are working without pay.
As the shutdown drags on for its third week, thousands of federal workers have also experienced missing their first paycheck this week.
