Donald Trump is fending off allegations he paid what amounted to a bribe to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi to persuade her against investigating Trump University in 2013.

Earlier this year, Trump paid a $2,500 fine to the IRS after a watchdog group filed a complaint regarding the Donald J. Trump Foundation's $25,000 contribution in 2013 to a political group supporting Bondi's reelection – a violation of federal laws that prohibit charitable nonprofit organizations from making political donations.

Questions over the transaction have surfaced again as Trump has launched an extended attack against Democratic rival Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation, accusing the former secretary of state of using her charitable organization as part of a pay-to-play scheme.

A Trump Organization representative told The Washington Post the donation was meant to be from Trump's personal account, and that it came from his foundation's account by clerical error.

"There was a clerical error that was made, all fixed, paperwork refiled," Republican National Committee spokesman Sean Spicer said Tuesday on CNN. "That's it."

But the more damning allegation is not whether Trump used his foundation to make a political donation, but that he did so in order to sway Bondi's office from taking legal action against him.

A Bondi spokesman told The Associated Press in June that she had personally solicited the donation from Trump – a conversation he said took place "several weeks" before her office said in September 2013 it was looking into allegations in a lawsuit by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman that accused Trump University of "persistent fraudulent, illegal and deceptive conduct."

Just days after disclosing its deliberations, Bondi's office received the contribution from Trump's foundation. And on Oct. 15, it told reporters "there was no consideration of whether to join [the New York lawsuit]," according to a timeline compiled by the watchdog group.

RNC spokesman Spicer on Tuesday said there was no connection between the payment and Bondi's office's decision "at all."

"There were 48 other attorneys general that didn't investigate this," he said. "The only one that did was Eric Schneiderman, who is a Hillary Clinton supporter. Of all of the 50 states where this was brought up, only one state pursued it: New York, a close ally of Hillary Clinton."

Spicer said the decision instead was proof there was "no merit in going forward" with the fraud case, which Trump has tried repeatedly and unsuccessfully to have dismissed.

The Clinton campaign has said it is not convinced by Trump's explanations.

"Donald Trump has been falsely attacking the charity run by President [Bill] Clinton when it is Trump's own foundation that has been caught in an actual pay-to-play scandal," Hillary for America spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri said in a statement Friday.

"While the Clinton Foundation has received the highest ratings from independent charitable watchdogs, Donald Trump's use of foundation money to donate to the Florida attorney general actually broke the law," she continued. "Worst of all, it appears the payment may have been intended to stave off an investigation into the sham Trump University that has ripped off unsuspecting students."

Trump has bragged of making influential donations to politicians of all stripes in the past, proudly admitting to using his wealth to buy influence – and offering it as proof he alone knows how the "rigged system" works and can therefore fix it.

"As a businessman and a very substantial donor to very important people, when you give, they do whatever the hell you want them to do," he told The Wall Street Journal last year. "As a businessman, I need that."

But on Monday, he insisted he "never spoke to" Bondi, and called her "a fine person, beyond reproach." On Tuesday, his campaign spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, clarified that his comments were "in reference to any discussion about Trump University – not the donation."

In March, Trump's chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg told The Washington Post that the donated funds normally would have come out of Trump's personal account, but that the clerk handling it checked a book of charitable organizations and confused Bondi's "And Justice For All" group with a Utah charity of the same name. In its tax filings to the IRS, the Trump Foundation then reported no political giving: The $25,000 donation was listed as a contribution to a different organization, a Kansas group called "Justice for All," which the CFO said was a mistake made by accountants.

Trump Organization controller Jeffrey McConney said the business was unaware of its mistakes until the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the Post brought the issue to their attention, and that Trump paid an excise tax afterward.