Manafort, Assange held secret talks in Ecuadorian Embassy: report

President Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort reportedly held private conversations with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London around the time he joined then-candidate Trump’s campaign team, according to The Guardian.

The paper reported Tuesday that Manafort met with Assange multiple times before the presidential election, as early as 2013 and as late as spring of 2016.

{mosads}Months after Manafort met with Assange, WikiLeaks released a trove of emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee by Russian intelligence officers.

Manafort has denied any involvement with the hack.

Assange first met with Manafort a year after the Australian native took asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy. The visit lasted less than an hour, according to The Guardian.

WikiLeaks in a tweet ripped the Guardian’s report and said it would bet $1 million that the Manafort-Assange meeting never happened.

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. https://t.co/R2Qn6rLQjn

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) November 27, 2018

WikiLeaks ultimately published thousands of emails that the CIA says were obtained in a hack by Russia’s military intelligence agency.

Special counsel Robert Mueller has indicted 12 Russian intelligence officers as part of his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. 

Manafort was thought to be cooperating with Mueller’s investigation in exchange for a plea deal, but new filings Monday from Mueller say Manafort violated his plea agreement by lying to federal prosecutors.

Manafort is currently serving time in a Virginia jail after being convicted of bank and tax fraud in a separate case from the one Mueller is investigating.  

Updated at 10:36 a.m.