A super PAC supporting Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s long shot presidential bid has been boosted in large part by a GOP megadonor, according to new campaign finance reports.
Wealthy businessman Timothy Mellon of Wyoming donated $5 million to the super PAC, American Values 2024, during the first six months of the year, a report filed Monday with the Federal Election Commission showed. His check represents the majority of the $9.8 million raised by the group in the first half of 2023.
Mellon, who is listed on the report as a self-employed investor, has contributed millions to Republican candidates and causes in the past, including a whopping $20 million to super PACs supporting former President Donald Trump’s re-election bid in 2020.
“The fact that Kennedy gets so much bipartisan support tells me two things: that he’s the one candidate who can unite the country and root out corruption and that he’s the one Democrat who can win in the general election,” Mellon said in a statement the super PAC circulated on Sunday.
Kennedy announced his candidacy in April.
Most of the super PAC's other funds came from Gavin de Becker, a security specialist who is listed in the FEC report as an author and founder of the Gavin de Becker Association. He contributed $4.7 million.
De Becker grabbed headlines in 2019 when then-Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos tasked him with investigating how the National Inquirer had accessed texts Bezos sent his mistress. In his probe, de Becker concluded that Saudi Arabia had accessed Bezos’ phone. A Saudi official called the allegation "silly" and "absurd."
Earlier campaign finance records showed a donor named Gavin de Becker, listing the same Hawaii Zip code as the most recent filing, contributing to Wisconsin GOP Sen. Ron Johnson’s re-election campaign last year.
In a separate statement circulated by the pro-Kennedy super PAC on Sunday, de Becker indicated that he aligns with the Democratic Party.
“We Democrats sorely need a candidate people can be enthusiastic about, someone brave enough to tell the truth and someone who understands our regulatory agencies because he has litigated against their corruption for years,” de Becker said.
The campaign finance report also listed contributions from individuals who have promoted conspiracy theories. Steve Kirsch, the founder of Infoseek, an internet search engine built in the 1990s, donated more than $10,000.
Kirsch, like Kennedy, has doubted the effectiveness of some vaccines. At the start of the coronavirus pandemic, Kirsch gave millions to a group searching for a treatment for the virus, but he later argued that hydroxychloroquine helped treat Covid. He also lashed out at what he said was a campaign against using ivermectin to treat the virus and adopted extremist positions against the FDA-approved Covid vaccines, the MIT Technology Review reported in 2021.
Jeff Hays, a documentary filmmaker who promotes a variety of conspiracy theories, donated $25,000 to America Values 2024. His latest film, “The Real Anthony Fauci,” features Kennedy and is based on the candidate's 2021 book of the same title.
The movie and the book allege that Fauci, the now-former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, misled government officials and the public about the effectiveness of Covid vaccines and how best to treat the virus.
The super PAC’s nine individual donors included Abby Rockefeller, an activist member of the wealthy Rockefeller family who has donated to Democratic campaigns in the past.
The super PAC touted her donation in Sunday's statement, which also said the group has now raised more than $16.8 million when incorporating contributions since June 30.
A few other individuals gave smaller donations, including one who listed his job as a “hospitalist” at a clinic in Mississippi.
