Timothy Mellon, the reclusive heir to a Gilded Age fortune, donated $50 million to a pro-Donald J. Trump super PAC the day after former President Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts, the largest single publicly disclosed donation ever, according to new federal filings.
The contribution’s impact on the 2024 presidential election is expected to be felt almost immediately: Days after the donation, the pro-Trump super PAC Make America Great Again said in a memo that it was beginning to set aside $100 million for advertising through Labor Day.
The group had just $34.5 million on hand at the end of April, and Mellon’s contributions made up the bulk of the roughly $70 million it raised in May. On Wednesday and Thursday, the group began allocating $30 million to ads to air in Georgia and Pennsylvania around Independence Day.
Mr. Mellon became the first donor to publicly announce a $100 million contribution to the federal government in this year’s election. He was already the single largest donor to the super PAC backing Mr. Trump and independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He has given $25 million to both men so far.
Democrats have sought to portray Kennedy as a Republican-backed obstructionist, highlighting Mr. Mellon’s dual contributions and seemingly divided loyalties. A pro-Kennedy super PAC quoted the hard-to-reach Mr. Mellon, and in a cover blurb for his upcoming book, Mr. Kennedy called the billionaire a “maverick entrepreneur.”
It’s unclear what Mellon’s huge donation means for future support of Kennedy, as he has alternated between supporting both candidates in the past. His most recent contributions to Kennedy’s super PAC were two $5 million donations in April.
But Mellon’s $50 million donation would go a long way to helping Trump allies shrink the financial advantage that President Biden and his allies have enjoyed thus far. Miriam Adelson, the casino billionaire widow of Sheldon G. Adelson, who died in 2021, also plans to donate at least an amount to a pro-Trump super PAC that matches the $90 million her family donated to the 2020 campaign, though most of the money has yet to arrive.
But outside groups backing Biden have already announced spending plans of more than $1 billion, including a $250 million ad budget secured by Future Forward, a major Biden super PAC.
$50 million in individual donations are rare in American election campaigns; contributions of that magnitude have come from candidates who self-funded their campaigns, married couples who made huge installment contributions, or donors who made installment contributions.
Until now, the main pro-Trump super PAC, Make America Great Again, has had limited fundraising success, relying mainly on Republican donors with personal ties to the former president.
During the first few months of 2024, the group raised between $7.4 million and $14.4 million per month. MAGA Inc. originally received $60 million in funding from Trump’s political action committee (which is prohibited from spending money to support his candidacy) before Trump announced his presidential run. But in a highly unusual deal, Trump later asked for the return of the $60 million it had donated months earlier, and MAGA Inc. returned the same amount to Save America, the PAC that is helping pay his legal costs.
Mellon has invested $25 million in the group over the past 12 months, now accounting for nearly half of the total the group has raised.
Mr. Mellon had long shunned the publicity that often comes with such large donors, but since bursting onto the Republican fundraising scene at the start of the Trump administration, he quickly developed a reputation as eccentric and maverick.
Despite his famous last name — the grandson of former Treasury Secretary Mellon and a member of the wealthy Mellon family — Republican fundraisers barely knew him until he gave $10 million to a Republican super PAC in mid-2018. The donation was the first of nine eight-figure checks he wrote to major Republican groups.
He now lives primarily in Wyoming but will hire political advisers to guide him in Washington. Few of the recipients of his money have ever met him.
The only donation matched by the $50 million check to support Trump was a donation Mellon made to another tough-on-immigration political project: the private construction of a border wall in Texas. In August 2021, Mellon donated $53 million worth of stock to help pay for the wall, a top priority for Texas Governor Greg Abbott.
Mr. Mellon, who did not respond to requests for comment Thursday, appears increasingly accustomed to scrutiny of his influence. Next month, he is releasing a book called “panam.captain” about his efforts to turn around Pan Am Systems, a conglomerate that includes railroads, airlines and marketing companies.
Mellon originally self-published his autobiography, but it was removed from online in 2016 after it contained inflammatory statements, including a line that said black people had become “more militant” after Social Security was expanded in the 1960s and 1970s.
Mellon also wrote that Social Security is akin to “slavery returning.”
“As a thank you for voting in federal elections, we are given many more free benefits, including food stamps, cell phones, WIC payments and Obamacare,” Mellon wrote, according to The Washington Post.
The new book, “panam.captain,” will be published by Skyhorse Publishing, whose president is Tony Lyons, co-founder of the pro-Kennedy super PAC American Values ​​2024.
In a rare interview with Bloomberg in 2020, Mellon praised Trump for following through on his promises, saying, “He did, or tried to do, what he promised to do.”
