The anonymous donor who gifted $130 million to fund American troop salaries is a reclusive heir to one of the wealthiest banking families in U.S. history.
Timothy Mellon, a descendant of the Gilded Age industrialist Andrew Mellon, was identified by The New York Times as the mystery man who made a rare multi-million-dollar gift to the Pentagon.
Mellon donated millions to groups that supported Trump’s 2024 campaign, including a one-time gift of $50 million to a PAC backing Trump—one of the most significant single donations of the election cycle. He also donated to groups supporting Robert F. Kennedy Jr. before the Kennedy scion pulled out of the presidential race.
Trump, 79, has described Mellon as a “great American citizen.” His Pentagon gift was used to pay American troops amid the government shutdown—despite being far too small to cover the entire military payroll.
There were concerns among Democrats that the mystery donor—and others who may follow suit, as the shutdown’s end does not appear imminent—may have been part of a foreign government. Mellon, 83, was born in Virginia and studied at Yale, but much of his personal life is private.
Mellon’s grandfather was the longtime Treasury Secretary Andrew W. Mellon, who served from 1921 to 1932 under presidents Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover. Andrew was the son of Thomas Mellon, who founded Mellon Bank, which made his family filthy rich for generations.
The donor’s dad, Paul Mellon, was a breeder of thoroughbred racehorses who benefited from the family’s banking riches. By 1957, when Fortune published its first list of the wealthiest Americans, it estimated that Paul Mellon, his sister, and his two cousins were among the eight wealthiest people in the United States.
Timothy Mellon’s cousin, Matthew Mellon, was an early crypto investor who struggled with drug addiction. He died in Mexico in 2018, aged 54, just as he was about to check himself into rehab in Mexico. He was divorced from Jimmy Choo co-founder Tamara Mellon, who once wrote that she was “snorting her way through alpine ranges of cocaine” during her marriage to the Mellon heir.
“He’s a great gentleman,” Trump said of Timothy Mellon, who appears to be more clean-cut than his younger cousin. “He’s a great patriot. He’s obviously a very substantial man, and he contributed $130 million toward the military in order to make up any difference. So he wanted to see the military get paid.”
The president insisted Friday that Mellon did not want to be identified, but he did say that the donation came from a “friend.” Pentagon officials have declined to confirm Mellon was behind the gift, but said it was accepted by its “general gift acceptance authority.”
Trump expressed shock that someone would give so generously without wanting credit.
“In the world of politics, you want your name mentioned,” Trump said. “He doesn’t.”
The donation, while significant, is a drop in the bucket for funding the U.S. military, which has 1.3 million service members. If every one were to receive an equal portion of the gift, it would come to about $100 each.
Democratic Sen. Chris Coons, a member of the Senate Appropriations panel, said American troops should not be funded by anything other than public funds.
“Using anonymous donations to fund our military raises troubling questions of whether our own troops are at risk of literally being bought and paid for by foreign powers,” the lawmaker from Connecticut said.
Republicans and Democrats have each jostled to pin the government shutdown—the result of a Senate budget impasse—on the other party.
While both sides have played politics, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has stepped in to make sure that the 35,000+ American troops in his country do not work without pay.
“The federal government will initiate an unscheduled expenditure to ensure that October salaries are paid on time,” a German government spokesperson said.
Stateside, Trump has ordered Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to use any means necessary to get troops paid. Other federal workers, like TSA agents and air traffic controllers, continue to work without a paycheck—and some have even resorted to gig jobs, like Uber, to get by.
“I am using my authority, as Commander in Chief, to direct our Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to use all available funds to get our Troops PAID on October 15th,” Trump posted to Truth Social earlier this month. “We have identified funds to do this, and Secretary Hegseth will use them to PAY OUR TROOPS.”
