The timing of the donation and Trump's seeming change in position toward the new bridge is "somewhat of an unusual case" in the campaign finance world, according to Devin Judge-Lord, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan's Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.
"Usually everybody has strong incentives for these kinds of donations to not get attention," said Judge Lord, adding that a position change "would normally only be taken if they didn't believe they would generate a lot of news coverage."
"This administration seems a lot less concerned with that type of news coverage and also with, you know, government ethics policies," he said. "So the fact that we're talking about it is somewhat unusual and it is somewhat a feature of this administration."
