The mystery donor who wrote President Donald Trump a $130 million check for the military is believed to be 83-year-old conservative billionaire Tim Mellon.

Two people familiar with the conversations identified Mellon to The New York Times, which published the development Saturday. Mellon inherited his fortune from his grandfather, banking magnate and former Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, and he has become a major player in conservative politics in his own right over the past decade.

Mellon donated a whopping $150 million to Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, surpassed only by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, according to Open Secrets. The day after Trump was convicted of 34 felony charges that same year, Mellon donated $50 million to Trump’s super PAC, one of the single largest disclosed contributions ever.

With this latest donation, it’s clearer than ever that Trump’s White House has been bought and paid for by the billionaire class. But this particular payment will hardly make a dent. Split among the military’s 1.3 million service members, the donation will come out to about $100 per person.

Last week, Trump announced that his administration had received a $130 million donation, and the Department of Defense confirmed that the government had accepted the money in order to “offset the cost of Service members’ salaries and benefits” under the “general gift acceptance authority.”

On Friday, Trump declined to say who the donor was, only saying he was “a great American citizen” and a “substantial man” who would “prefer that his name not be mentioned.”

Budget experts argued that the donation violated the Antideficiency Act, which puts barriers on the use of funds and personnel during an appropriations lapse, prohibiting the use of funds not allocated by Congress. Legal experts pointed out that Trump was already going out on a limb legally by repurposing other DOD funding to keep service members paid.

A federal agent blatantly violated a court order against using excessive force against journalists and protesters last Thursday by pointing a gun in a veteran’s face, saying “Bang, bang” and “You’re dead, liberal.”

The Chicago Headline Club, a nonprofit representing journalists in the Chicago area, filed a complaint in federal court after the incident, which took place in the city’s Little Village neighborhood. Local residents had gathered to observe and protest a large presence of federal agents in the area, and Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino did not respond well or care to take the earlier court order into consideration.

According to the complaint, combat veteran Chris Gentry was “lawfully standing on the side of the road voicing his opposition as agents were driving by in their vehicles.” That’s when an agent pointed a gun at him and threatened to kill him.

That was just one of many shocking incidents that day. Bovino also allegedly threw a tear gas canister into a crowd of protesters, who, according to the complaint, were not violent or committing any crimes. Some of the protesters attempted to talk to Bovino and other federal agents there and were rebuffed. Bovino and his colleagues instead shoved several people and threw more tear gas canisters at them, according to the complaint.

The Department of Homeland Security claimed in a social media post that protesters “shot at agents with commercial artillery shell fireworks” and that they attacked federal agents first, which the complaint calls a lie. Further, the complaint quotes protesters who say that the crowd in Little Village was peaceful. Bovino claimed to a reporter at the scene Thursday that he was hit with a rock, but did not appear to be injured.

Federal Judge Sara Ellis has ordered Bovino to appear in court Tuesday to testify about Thursday’s incidents, as well as sit for a five-hour deposition on November 5.

Judging by Bovino and his fellow federal agents’ actions on Thursday, court orders and legal action don’t appear to be a deterrent. Other federal agents nationwide, particularly those working for ICE, have made violent arrests and lied about them, even dragging a four-foot-six blind man outside of a Portland detention facility and dropping him on his head earlier this month.

The fatal flaw in the criminal cases against Donald Trump: credibility.

Ex-special prosecutor Jack Smith’s legal team was expecting to file the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case in the nation’s capital. But in an attempt to play the case by the book, Smith surprised them by opting to file in Florida instead, where the case would have a one in six chance of landing in Judge Aileen Cannon’s courtroom, reported The Washington Post’s Carol Leonnig and Aaron C. Davis in their book, Injustice.

“Are you all fucking insane?” David Raskin, a federal prosecutor who had worked on the case, blurted out in a Justice Department hallway at the time, according to the Post.

Smith believed then that filing in Florida could place the case on firmer legal footing, reducing the possibility that the most egregious charges could be overturned down the line. Smith further trusted that even if the case was randomly assigned to Cannon, they would be able to prove Trump was guilty by sheer volume of evidence.

“I’m not worried about Florida,” Smith told Justice Department officials while presenting his decision.

Instead, once the case was in her hands, Cannon blatantly took steps to drag it out and turn the tide in Trump’s favor.

A year on, the decision to bring the case to Cannon’s doorstep has been interpreted as the case’s death knell. The quest to bring Trump to justice for his alleged crimes disintegrated by election night 2024, by which point the MAGA leader had managed to transform the myriad cases against him into supposed evidence that he was being unfairly prosecuted by a Democratic presidential administration and its DOJ.

Trump has since rejiggered the Justice Department in his image, leveraging its heft to prosecute his own perceived political enemies, including New York Attorney General Letitia James and former special counsel James Comey. His next target is California Senator Adam Schiff.

Smith has also become the subject of........

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