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Timothy Mellon is a secretive billionaire, heir to a Gilded Age banking fortune.
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He is RFK Jr.’s biggest backer and has donated $25 million to a super PAC that supports him.
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But he also spent $75 million on Trump, including $50 million the day after his conviction.
Timothy Mellon has now emerged as former President Donald Trump’s most important donor and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.spending tens of millions of dollars on the two men.
A mega-donor to the Republican Party for several years, the relatively private billionaire has emerged as a Kennedy’s main financier last year, contributing the majority of funding to American Values 2024, the main super PAC supporting Kennedy’s candidacy.
In July 2023 – before Kennedy abandoned his Democratic primary campaign for an independent candidacy – Mellon described Kennedy as the “only candidate who can unite the country and root out corruption.” He has since donated $25 million to the super PAC, including $10 million in April.
At the same time, Mellon contributed generously to the pro-Trump super PAC “Make America Great Again Inc.”, investing $25 million into the PAC from July 2023 to April 2024.
Then came the big one: the day after Trump was convicted of 34 criminal charges by a Manhattan jury, Mellon donated $50 million to MAGA Inc., according to documents filed with the Federal Election Commission on Thursday.
Mellon did not respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.
Who is Timothy Mellon?
Mellon, 81 years old, is the grandson of André Mellona Gilded Age banking titan who served as Treasury Secretary from 1921 to 1932, spanning three Republican presidents.
He is heir to the family fortune. Forbes estimates the family’s net worth is more than $14 billion.
When it comes to Mellon’s business ventures, he is perhaps best known for buying and turning around Pan Am Systems, and is set to release a book about it next month titled “panam.captain.”
Mellon is a former liberal who has drifted to the right over the years, telling Bloomberg in 2020, it was mostly about his business.
“I think that came largely from establishing business with certain small businesses and watching the interaction between business and government — it seemed like the government was making things very difficult and against the interests of workers,” Mellon said at the time. . “The more restrictions you have, the less likely you are to hire people.”
He too once wrote in a self-published autobiography that social welfare programs are a “reduction of slavery”, while also saying that black people have become “even more belligerent and unwilling to contribute to improving their own situations” following the expansion of welfare systems. be social.
He told Bloomberg that he “said everything I wanted to say” and has “no regrets” about the book.
He’s a major contributor to Republican Party causes — and Democrats are eager to point that out
The last time Mellon spent this much money at once was literally to build a border wall.
In 2021, Mellon contributed $53 million to an effort led by Republican Governor Greg Abbott of Texas to build a wall along the US-Mexico border, effectively financing this entire endeavor on its own.
But he has donated millions of dollars to Republican Party causes and campaigns in recent years, including $20 million to a pro-Trump super PAC in 2020, $45 million to a super PAC tied to GOP leadership, and $30 millions to a super PAC associated with the Senate. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
As Democrats seek to downplay Kennedy’s appeal to the party’s base so that it doesn’t have a negative impact on President Joe Biden’s chances, one of their main calling cards has been Mellon’s donation record.
After Mellon’s most recent contribution to Kennedy became public in May, Democratic National Committee spokesman Matt Corridoni said the transaction “tells us everything we need to know.”
“MAGA Republicans are dead set on supporting RFK Jr. to be a Trump spoiler in this race,” Corridoni said in a statement at the time. “This is even more proof that a vote for RFK Jr. is a vote for Trump.”
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