An extraordinary secret collusion between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump has been revealed in a Democratic National Committee file released by Guccifer 2.0, the hacker who claimed responsibility for breaching the DNC database.

The file released on the hacker’s webpage on Tuesday morning reveals that ‘Donald J. Trump’ donated between $100,000 and $250,000 to Hillary Clinton during this presidential campaign, a figure that becomes even more extraordinary considering reports Trump’s own campaign funds have dwindled to $1.3 million.

DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz acknowledged that the party servers were hacked and that opposition research was stolen.

It is well known that Trump has donated money to Democrats in the past, with Ted Cruz raising this issue during the Republican primary debates. However public disclosure files reveal that these were token donations that amounted to a total of $6,400. Trump himself dismissed them, saying he has donated to Democrats and Republicans in the past: ‘Before this I was a businessman. I give to everybody.’

However the new information about Trump secretly donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to his likely presidential rival raises different questions and lends credibility to the persistent rumor in political circles that Trump is a plant designed to clear the path for a Hillary Clinton presidency.

In an interview with The National Review, Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) talks about rumors she’s heard that Trump is a secret Clinton plant — and she can’t dismiss the idea entirely.

“There are some theories on the internet that this is Bill Clinton’s best political deal,” says Kaptur, who supported Bernie Sanders in this year’s Democratic primary. “That he [Bill Clinton] and Donald are buddies, and they have a lot of similar friends in New York, and he has masterfully selected a friend who maybe by October will say, ‘You know, this is very boring. And I’m going to get out.’ Do I believe it 100 percent, do I believe it 2 percent? You know, you really wonder.”

There are three main lines of argument supporting the assertion that Donald Trump is running a false flag campaign:

Trump cannot possibly be considered either a Republican or a conservative, once you account for his apparent political beliefs (many of which are remarkably liberal) and concrete policy proposals (or lack thereof). Trump has close ties to both Hillary and Bill Clinton, with the former a guest of honour at his wedding in 2006, and the latter a long term friend. Trump’s promises to run on an independent ticket — if he lost the Republican nomination — indicate he cares more about splitting the Republican vote (essentially ensuring the election of a Democratic president) than he does about actually electing Republicans. He also lacks the wherewithal and/or long-term funding to mount a legitimate presidential campaign after becoming securing the presumptive Republican nomination.

Trump’s relationship with Bill Clinton seems to have deepened in the past few years. On August 5, The Washington Post reported that Clinton spoke with Trump in May of this year about Trump’s political ambitions. Here’s the how the paper characterized the exchange:

Former president Bill Clinton had a private telephone conversation in late spring with Donald Trump at the same time that the billionaire investor and reality-television star was nearing a decision to run for the White House … Four Trump allies and one Clinton associate familiar with the exchange said that Clinton encouraged Trump’s efforts to play a larger role in the Republican Party and offered his own views of the political landscape.

An aide to Bill Clinton characterized the exchange as merely “a casual chat” (those are the Post’s words), and Trump later denied the suggestion that the former President persuaded him to run on the Republican ticket, but the fact the exchange took place at all suggests that Clinton could have pictured what Trump’s campaign would look like, and more importantly, what it would mean for his wife and her own presidential ambitions.

Sowing division and chaos within the GOP, while at the same time convincing safety-first Democrats that they can’t take a chance voting for an outsider candidate like Bernie Sanders in case splitting the vote damages Democratic chances for the White House, the Trump campaign has been a masterclass in how to be a double agent plant. And that is before you even get to the secret donations.