Timothy Mellon, reclusive heir to a Pittsburgh banking fortune, was such an unknown figure among Republican operatives that they needed to Google his name when he reached out in 2018 to offer his help in the midterm elections. The staff quickly discovered this was no middling donor: Mellon planned to give $10 million — with the suggestion that he wanted to give more.
This April, Mellon gave another $10 million, this time to US President Donald Trump’s super PAC, America First Action, the only Trump-endorsed fund-raising group permitted to collect unlimited contributions. The donation transformed Mellon into Trump’s biggest political

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