Meet the billionaire Trump donor set to make a killing on Venezuela

One of President Donald Trump’s top billionaire donors, who has spent the past several months backing a push for regime change in Venezuela, is about to cash in after the president’s kidnapping of the nation’s president, Nicolas Maduro, this weekend.

While he declined to tell members of Congress, Trump has said he tipped offoil executives before the illegal attack. At a press conference following the attack, he said the US would have “our very large United States oil companies” go into Venezuela, which he said the US will “run” indefinitely, and “start making money” for the United States.

As Judd Legum reported on Monday for Popular Information, among the biggest beneficiaries will be the billionaire investor Paul Singer:

In 2024, Singer, an 81-year-old with a net worth of $6.7 billion, donated $5 million to Make America Great Again Inc., Trump’s Super PAC. Singer donated tens of millions more in the 2024 cycle to support Trump’s allies, including $37 million to support the election of Republicans to Congress. He also donated an undisclosed amount to fund Trump’s second transition.

Singer is also a major pro-Israel donor, with his foundation having donated more than $3.3 million to groups like the Birthright Israel Foundation, the Israel America Academic Exchange, Boundless Israel, and others in 2021, according to tax filings.

In November 2025, less than two months before Trump’s operation to take over Venezuela, Singer’s investment firm, Elliott Investment Management, inked a highly fortuitous deal.

It purchased Citgo, the US-based subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, for $5.9 billion—a sale that was forced by a Delaware court after Venezuela defaulted on its bond payments.

The court-appointed special master who forced the sale, Robert Pincus, is a member of the board of directors for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

Elliott Management hailed the court order requiring the sale in a press release, saying it was “backed by a group of strategic US energy investors.”

Singer acquired the Citgo’s three massive coastal refineries, 43 oil terminals, and more than 4,000 gas stations at a “major discount” because of its distressed status. Advisers to the court overseeing the sale estimated its value at $11-13 billion, while the Venezuelan government estimated it at $18 billion.

As Legum explained, the Trump administration’s embargo on Venezuelan oil imports to the United States bore the primary responsibility for the company’s plummeting value:

Citgo’s refiners are purpose-built to process heavy-grade Venezuelan “sour” crude. As a result, Citgo was forced to source oil from more expensive sources in Canada and Colombia. (Oil produced in the United States is generally light-grade.) This made Citgo’s operations far less profitable.

It is the preferred modus operandifor Singer, whose hedge fund is often described as a “vulture” capital group. As Francesca Fiorentini, a commentator at Zeteo, explained, Singer “is famous for doing things like buying the debt of struggling countries like Argentina for pennies on the dollar and then forcing that country to repay him with interest plus legal fees.”

Venezuelan Vice President and Minister of Petroleum Delcy Rodríguez called the sale of Citgo to Singer “fraudulent” and “forced” in December.

After the US abducted Maduro this week, Trump named Rodriguez as Venezuela’s interim president—and she was formally sworn in Monday—but he warned that she’ll pay a “very big price” if she refuses to do “what we want.”

That is good news for Singer, who is expected to be one of the biggest beneficiaries of an oil industry controlled by US corporations, which will likely not be subject to crippling sanctions.

Singer has reportedly met with Trump directly at least four times since he was first elected in 2016, most recently in 2024. While it is unknown whether the two discussed Venezuela during those meetings, groups funded by Singer have pushed aggressively for Trump to take maximal action to decapitate the country’s leadership.

Since 2011, Singer has donated over $10 million and continues to sit on the board of directors for the right-wing Manhattan Institute think tank, which in recent months has consistently advocated for Maduro to be removed from power. In October, it published an article praising Trump for his “consistent policies against Venezuela’s Maduro.”

He has also been a major donor to the neoconservative think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), serving as its second-largest contributor from 2008-2011, with more than $3.6 million.

In late November, shortly before Trump announced that the US had closed Venezuelan airspace and began to impound Venezuelan oil tankers, FDD published a policy brief stating that the US has “capabilities to launch an overwhelming air and missile campaign against the Maduro regime” that it could use to remove him from power.

Singer himself has acted as a financial attack dog for Trump during his first year back in office. In June, he contributed $1 million to fund a super PAC aiming to oust Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who’d become Trump’s leading Republican critic over his Department of Justice’s refusal to release its files pertaining to the billionaire sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

A super PAC tied to Miriam Adelson, another top pro-Israel donor who recently said she’d give Trump $250 million if he ran for a third term, also reportedly helped to fund the campaign against Massie.

Massie has since gone on to be one of the most vocal opponents in Congress to Trump’s regime change push in Venezuela, joining Democrats to co-sponsor multiple failed war powers resolutions that would have reined in the president’s ability to launch military strikes against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and launch an attack on mainland Venezuela.

As the Trump administration has asserted that American corporations are entitled to the oil controlled by Venezuela’s state firm, Massie rebutted this weekend that: “It’s not American oil. It’s Venezuelan oil.”

“Oil companies entered into risky deals to develop oil, and the deals were canceled by a prior Venezuelan government,” he said. “What’s happening: Lives of US soldiers are being risked to make those oil companies (not Americans) more profitable.”

Massie said that Singer, “who’s already spent $1,000,000 to defeat me in the next election, stands to make billions of dollars on his distressed Citgo investment, now that this administration has taken over Venezuela.”

Fiorentini added that “Paul Singer’s shady purchase of Citgo has everything to do with this coup.”