Bondi and Trump both insist that the donation had no connection with the decision not to pursue the case against Trump, and there’s no definitive proof otherwise. There is, however, the strange timing, and Trump’s past statements, in which he assured audiences that, yes, the game was rigged; yes, politicians could be bought; yes, he had done the buying; and yes, he was the only one who could fix it, since he was honest about how the game worked.

Asked about his Journal comments during the August 6, 2015, Republican primary debate in Cleveland, for example, Trump said, “You’d better believe it. If I ask them, if I need them, you know, most of the people on this stage I've given to, just so you understand, a lot of money.”

He went on to defend his donations to Hillary Clinton specifically—and to the Clinton Foundation, which he has recently taken to bashing. “With Hillary Clinton, I said be at my wedding and she came to my wedding. You know why?” he asked. “She didn't have a choice because I gave. I gave to a foundation that, frankly, that foundation is supposed to do good. I didn't know her money would be used on private jets going all over the world. It was.”

In January, Trump said, “When I want something I get it. When I call, they kiss my ass. It's true.”

Now, he insists that isn’t true—or, at least, isn’t true in a case that looks a lot like what he described. Even though a Bondi consultant confirmed that she had spoken to Trump about a donation, Trump says he did not. “Never spoke to her about that at all,” Trump told reporters during a gaggle on Monday. Bondi later endorsed Trump and spoke at the Republican National Convention this July.

In a way, it’s a he-said, she-said story—Trump says he never spoke to Bondi about the donation, her representative says he did. But more importantly, it’s a he-said, he-said story: Trump said he could buy politicians off, and now he claims that isn’t true. Which is it?

Similar allegations have been made involving Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican who was previously state attorney general, though that story is a little less direct than the Bondi one. In 2010, Texas started looking into Trump University and Trump Institute. A high-ranking state lawyer alleged that the state’s consumer protection division wanted to bring a lawsuit but was overruled by the attorney general’s office.

“The decision not to sue him was political,” John Owens, the deputy director of the consumer protection division, told The Dallas Morning News.“Had [Trump] not been involved in politics to the extent he was at the time, we would have gotten approval. Had he been just some other scam artist, we would have sued him.”

Abbott has denied the decision not to proceed was driven by politics. In any case, Trump later gave $35,000 to Abbott’s campaign for governor—but that was three years later—rather than a few days before, as in the Bondi case.