President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort held secret conversations with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London around the time he joined Trump's campaign team, the Guardian reported on Tuesday.
The discussions between Manafort and Assange reportedly took place multiple times between 2013 and 2016, all before the presidential election.
Manafort’s first visit to the embassy occurred about a year after Assange sought asylum there, according to sources, although it is unclear what they talked about.
However, a few months after an alleged meeting in March 2016, WikiLeaks released a trove of emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee by Russian intelligence officers, according to the Guardian
Manafort has denied any involvement with the hack, and said he is considering "all legal action" against the newspaper for the report.
WikiLeaks slammed the Guardian report in a tweet.
“Remember this day when the Guardian permitted a serial fabricator to totally destroy the paper's reputation. @WikiLeaks is willing to bet the Guardian a million dollars and its editor's head that Manafort never met Assange,” the tweet read.
Manafort was thought to be cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election in exchange for a plea deal, but Mueller said on Monday that Manafort violated the plea agreement by lying to federal prosecutors, The Hill reported.
One of the bylines in the Guardian article is Luke Harding, who wrote "Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win," which claims the Trump campaign colluded with Russia.
Harding told Business Insider last year that the dossier written by former British spy Christopher Steele is "standing up pretty well" as more Russia revelations become public.
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