The mystery donor who wrote President Donald Trump a $130 million check for the military is believed to be 83-year-old conservative billionaire Tim Mellon.
Two people familiar with the conversations identified Mellon to The New York Times, which published the development Saturday. Mellon inherited his fortune from his grandfather, banking magnate and former Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, and he has become a major player in conservative politics in his own right over the past decade.
Mellon donated a whopping $150 million to Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, surpassed only by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, according to Open Secrets. The day after Trump was convicted of 34 felony charges that same year, Mellon donated $50 million to Trump’s super PAC, one of the single largest disclosed contributions ever.
With this latest donation, it’s clearer than ever that Trump’s White House has been bought and paid for by the billionaire class. But this particular payment will hardly make a dent. Split among the military’s 1.3 million service members, the donation will come out to about $100 per person.
Last week, Trump announced that his administration had received a $130 million donation, and the Department of Defense confirmed that the government had accepted the money in order to “offset the cost of Service members’ salaries and benefits” under the “general gift acceptance authority.”
On Friday, Trump declined to say who the donor was, only saying he was “a great American citizen” and a “substantial man” who would “prefer that his name not be mentioned.”
Budget experts argued that the donation violated the Antideficiency Act, which puts barriers on the use of funds and personnel during an appropriations lapse, prohibiting the use of funds not allocated by Congress. Legal experts pointed out that Trump was already going out on a limb legally by repurposing other DOD funding to keep service members paid.
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