Over the summer, the Saudi Arabian government promised the Trump administration $100 million for the U.S.’s efforts to stabilize parts of Syria liberated from the Islamic State, a coup for Donald Trump, who regularly complains about other countries not coughing up enough money on defense. But despite the pledge, one official involved in Syria policy told The New York Times that it was unclear when, if ever, the money would actually materialize in American bank accounts. But as luck would have it, just this past Tuesday, it did—the same day Secretary of State Mike Pompeo landed in Riyadh to get some answers on the fate of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist and dissident who entered the kingdom’s consulate in Turkey on October 2 and was never seen again. Some people have dismissed the notion that the two events are connected—“The specific transfer of funds has been long in process and has nothing to do with other events or the secretary’s visit,” Brett McGurk, the U.S. envoy to the coalition fighting the Islamic State, told the Times. But others aren’t so convinced!

“The timing of this is no coincidence,” the American official working on Syria policy told the Times on Tuesday. “In all probability, the Saudis want Trump to know that his cooperation in covering for the Khashoggi affair is important to the Saudi monarch,” Joshua Landis, a professor at the University of Oklahoma, surmised to The Washington Post. “Much of its financial promises to the U.S. will be contingent on this cooperation.” Coincidentally, the $100 million hit the U.S. accounts on the same day Trump stepped up his defense of the kingdom, telling the Associated Press that what we have here is another case of “guilty until proven innocent,” which is exactly what happened with Brett Kavanaugh, who the president believes is “innocent all the way.” Trump also informed his Twitter followers that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman maintains he knows nothing about nothing, and if you can’t trust the word of the guy who imprisoned his own cousins, who can you trust?

Even as the president goes to bat for his Saudi pals, more evidence has emerged that paints a grisly picture of what actually happened to the journalist. Turkish officials have conducted their own investigation, and the findings appear to differ significantly from Trump’s rosy narrative: