Timothy Mellon spotted outside a tour train during a 1981 real estate tour. Exact date and location unknown.
AP photo
The mysterious donor behind a $130 million donation to pay U.S. soldiers during the government shutdown is Timothy Mellon, heir to the famed Gilded Age banking family, The New York Times reported Saturday.
But Mr. Mellon’s donation amounts to only about $100 per military member. It costs nearly $6.4 billion to pay the U.S. military every two weeks.
And the Times reported, citing two people familiar with the matter that identified the billionaire railroad tycoon as a donor, that using his funds could violate federal law.
President Donald Trump did not name the man when announcing the donation at the White House on Thursday, but called him a “great patriot” and “a friend of mine.”
“And he’s a huge supporter of mine,” Trump told reporters Friday night. “He’s a great guy, but he doesn’t want any publicity.”
Mellon has an estimated net worth of nearly $1 billion, according to Forbes.
But Mellon wrote in an email to the press in 2024, “I am not a billionaire! … I have never been and will never be a billionaire.”
Mellon’s donation is intended to help pay for salaries and benefits for U.S. military personnel during the prolonged federal government shutdown.
The donation may have violated the Anti-Deficiency Act, which prohibits federal agencies from spending funds not appropriated by Congress, the Times reported.
Mr. Mellon’s gift is also unlikely to do much to offset the cost of military pay.
There are more than 1.3 million active duty military personnel, and the Trump administration’s 2025 budget includes a military compensation request of about $600 billion, the Times reported.
Mellon’s grandfather, Andrew Mellon, is one of the longest-serving Treasury secretaries and a longtime donor to President Trump.
He donated $50 million to President Trump’s super PAC during the 2024 campaign, one of the largest single donations ever shared publicly, the Times reported.
A spokesperson for Sen. Chris Coons told NBC News that the Delaware Democrat has concerns about allowing anonymous donors to finance government spending.
“The use of anonymous donations to fund our military raises worrying questions about whether our military is literally at risk of being bought and paid for by foreign powers,” the spokesperson said.
Read the full Times report here.
