Billionaire Timothy Mellon has donated $130 million to help fund US troops during the ongoing government shutdown, according to The New York Times. The reclusive heir and major financial backer of President Donald Trump has made the contribution anonymously.
Trump announced the donation on Thursday, referring to the donor only as a "patriot", a "great American citizen", a "substantial man", and a friend, without disclosing his name.
The amount is intended to ensure that active-duty service members continue receiving their pay despite the budget deadlock that has disrupted government operations.
Who Is Timothy Mellon?
- Born in 1942, Timothy Mellon is the grandson of former US Treasury Secretary Andrew W Mellon and a descendant of Thomas Mellon, an Irish immigrant who built a vast banking and real estate empire after arriving in the US in 1818, as per the BBC. The Mellon family, today worth over $14 billion according to Forbes, ranks among America's 50 richest dynasties.
- Mellon attended Yale University, where he studied city planning. His father was a major benefactor of the institution and funded the Yale Center for British Art, home to the largest collection of British art outside the UK.
- In 1981, he founded Guilford Transportation Industries, a holding company named after his hometown of Guilford, Connecticut. It went on to acquire several major railroads across Canada, New England, and the mid-Atlantic. In 1998, the company entered aviation by purchasing the bankrupt Pan American World Airways (Pan Am). Around this time, Mellon developed a deep passion for flying, logging over 11,500 hours as a pilot. A synopsis for his 2025 autobiography notes that he "quite literally kept the American institution that is Pan Am flying."
- In 2012, Mellon donated $1 million to a group searching for Amelia Earhart's lost aircraft, joining the expedition himself, though no evidence was found. He later sued the organisation, alleging fraud, but lost the case. Mellon served 21 years as a trustee of the Andrew W Mellon Foundation, stepping down in 2002. He moved from Connecticut to Wyoming in 2005, where he has since lived a reclusive life away from public attention.
- His 2015 self-published memoir sparked controversy for criticising US social welfare programs, which he described as "Slavery Redux," claiming that Black voters were being "bought" with government benefits. Last year, the 83-year-old backed Trump's 2024 election campaign, contributing $50 million. He was also the biggest donor to independent candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr's campaign.
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