Timothy Mellon, a reclusive banking heir who was one of President Trump’s and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s biggest financial backers in the 2024 election, gave two sprawling properties in Connecticut last year to Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine group Mr. Kennedy founded.
The donation, which has not previously been reported, shows how tightly intertwined Mr. Mellon has become with Mr. Kennedy and their shared work against vaccines. The adjacent parcels cover about 300 acres at the confluence of the Connecticut and Eightmile Rivers in Lyme and feature a pool, a tennis court and several buildings, property records show.
The properties were appraised this year at a total of $5.5 million. It is not clear what Children’s Health Defense, which is based in New Jersey, plans to do with them. Mr. Mellon, 83, has talked with pride about building the estate. In a self-published autobiography in 2014, he wrote about his plans for the land.
“I will not make such a contribution to groups like the Nature Conservancy or Sierra Club because I have little confidence that they, unlike say the state of Connecticut, will be around forever,” Mr. Mellon wrote.
The estate was sold for $0 in August, property records filed with the Lyme town clerk show, and Mr. Mellon agreed to cover the costs of improvements and maintenance while retaining access to parts of the property, including a family cemetery.
In a text message to The New York Times, Mr. Mellon, who cultivates an aura of distance and mystery, said the donation was none of its business and declined to comment. Children’s Health Defense did not respond to requests for comment, nor did its president, Mary Holland.
Mr. Kennedy, the secretary of health and human services, did not respond to a request for comment. He stepped down as chairman of Children’s Health Defense in December 2024 before his confirmation hearings, after taking a leave of absence to run for president.
“Know that it has been one of my greatest privileges and honors to lead this group over all these years,” Mr. Kennedy wrote in a resignation letter to Ms. Holland and the organization’s board. “I am confident that the group under your and the board’s leadership will continue to do outstanding work defending the health and rights of children.”
Mr. Mellon burst into the world of political fund-raising in the Trump era. During the 2024 cycle, he gave $150 million to Mr. Trump’s super PAC and $25 million to Mr. Kennedy’s super PAC. Last October, during the government shutdown, Mr. Mellon was reported to be the anonymous donor who gave $130 million to the U.S. government to pay the salaries of troops.
Children’s Health Defense has recently taken in between $15 million and $23 million a year in revenue, according to tax filings. Mr. Kennedy joined the organization in 2015, when it was called the World Mercury Project. In 2018, the group rebranded, and it has aggressively disseminated vaccine misinformation, including unproven claims that vaccines cause autism.
Mr. Kennedy’s finances were closely tied to the organization’s: In addition to receiving a salary, he was paid by a law firm that handled work for Children’s Health Defense. He has said he donated the proceeds of book sales to the organization. He and Mr. Mellon share a publisher, Skyhorse Publishing, whose founder, Tony Lyons, is on the board of Children’s Health Defense.
In a 2024 interview with The Times, Mr. Kennedy said Mr. Mellon had been a financial champion of Children’s Health Defense since the Covid-19 pandemic. Mr. Kennedy said Mr. Mellon seemed concerned less by vaccines than by government lockdowns and personal liberties.
Mr. Kennedy said he had met Mr. Mellon in person once. It is not clear how much Mr. Mellon has given to the organization.
In the blurb on the front cover of Mr. Mellon’s autobiography, Mr. Kennedy called the billionaire a “maverick entrepreneur who embodies the most admirable qualities of what F.D.R. called ‘American Industrial genius.’”
The transaction in Lyme is laid out in a series of deeds on file at the clerk’s office.
In August, Mr. Mellon gave the two parcels, 100-7 Joshuatown Road and 62 Joshua Lane, to Children’s Health Defense, the records show. Days later, Mr. Mellon signed an agreement for Clipper Properties, a limited liability company in Wyoming, where Mr. Mellon has a home, to maintain the two properties for five years and cover the cost of insurance.
As part of this agreement, signed by Mr. Mellon and Ms. Holland, a Clipper representative would live in a brick house on one of the properties.
The property records related to the Children’s Health Defense transaction do not appear to refer to a signature architectural contribution that Mr. Mellon made to Lyme — an exact replica of a medieval Norwegian church he had built more than a decade ago on a corner of one of his plots.
Kirsten Noyes contributed research
