Report: Manafort met with Julian Assange ahead of 2016 leaks

A British newspaper alleges that Paul Manafort secretly met WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London within days or weeks of being brought aboard Donald Trump's presidential campaign.

If confirmed, the report Tuesday suggests a direct connection between the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks, which released tens of thousands of emails stolen by Russian spies during the 2016 election.

The campaign seized on the emails to undermine Trump's rival, Hillary Clinton.

The Guardian, which did not identify the sources for its reporting, said that Manafort met with Assange "around March 2016" the same month that Russian hackers began their all-out effort to steal emails from the Clinton campaign.

Manafort's lawyers did not immediately return messages from The Associated Press.

Assange's Ecuadorian lawyer, Carlos Poveda, said the Guardian report was false.

And WikiLeaks said on Twitter that it was "willing to bet the Guardian a million dollars and its editor's head that Manafort never met Assange."