Reclusive billionaire emerges as major Trump backer

Timothy Mellon, a reclusive heir to the Mellon family fortune, has emerged as one of the largest financial backers of President Donald Trump and the Republican Party in recent years.

In the 2024 election cycle, Mellon, 82, contributed $125 million to the super PAC Make America Great Again, Inc., which supported Trump's campaign, according to Federal Election Commission filings, Caliber.Az reports, citing foreign media.  

When accounting for donations to Republican congressional candidates and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Mellon’s total contributions reached $165 million, as reported by campaign finance tracker Open Secrets.   Mellon wasn’t the only billionaire to make significant contributions to Trump’s re-election bid.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk also played a major role, donating at least $119 million to a PAC he established for Trump’s re-election, and at least $132 million in total when including donations to other Republican candidates. However, unlike Mellon, who prefers to stay out of the public eye, Musk made his financial support much more visible. Mellon, a grandson of Andrew Mellon, is a reclusive billionaire with a history of outspoken views on federal entitlement programs, which he has referred to as “slavery redux.”  

Mellon is known for rarely speaking to the press and has little interest in socializing with the politicians to whom he contributes. Despite his significant financial contributions to political causes, many recipients have never met him in person. In fact, during the 2020 election, Republican staffers had to Google him to learn who he was when he offered a major donation, as reported by The New York Times.  

Mellon did not respond to multiple requests through his family’s foundation, nor were efforts to contact him through other channels successful. A lawyer who had previously worked with him noted that he no longer represents Mellon. In a rare interview with Bloomberg in 2020, Mellon expressed his belief that President Trump had largely fulfilled his campaign promises.   “He’s done the things he promised to, or tried to do the things he’s promised to…in trade and righting the balance between our country and the rest of the world, especially China,” Mellon said.  

Beyond his support for Trump, Mellon also contributed to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s presidential campaign, donating $25 million to the political action committee American Values 2024 backing Kennedy. Kennedy had previously praised Mellon in a blurb for his self-published autobiography panam.captain (2015), calling him “a maverick entrepreneur who embodies the most admirable qualities of what FDR called ‘American Industrial genius.’” (Mellon and Kennedy share a publisher in Skyhorse Publishing).  

A century ago, the Mellon family was deeply embedded in American politics. Timothy's grandfather, Andrew Mellon, served as US Treasury Secretary from 1921 to 1932, where he implemented tax cuts for the wealthy and campaigned successfully to eliminate estate taxes, ensuring his vast fortune was passed down to his heirs. Before his political career, Andrew Mellon made his fortune in banking, industry, and early-stage investments.  

Today, the Mellon family remains one of the wealthiest in the United States, with a combined net worth of $14 billion, according to Forbes. While Timothy Mellon's exact wealth is unclear, he reported a net worth of approximately $700 million in a 2014 deposition. The London Times has estimated Timothy Mellon's net worth at $1 billion, while a relative told Vanity Fair that Mellon preferred to keep his true wealth private, suggesting it could be closer to $4.2 billion.   It appears that Mellon became politically active later in life.

From 1996 to 2018, he donated approximately $350,000, according to the Wall Street Journal — a sum far smaller than the hundreds of millions he has since contributed to supporting Trump-era Republicans. In the 2020 election, Mellon donated $60 million to Republican candidates, including $20 million to Trump, according to Open Secrets. In the 2022 midterm elections, his contributions totaled $41.7 million.

By Naila Huseynova