A US Senate report on Tuesday revealed that chairman of President Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign secretly shared information with a Russian intelligence officer, posing a “grave” espionage threat to the United States, reported AFP.

Paul
Manafort, a veteran Republican political consultant, communicated with  Konstantin Kilimnik, identified as a Russian intelligence officer, and Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch close to Vladimir Putin, nearly six months before and during the Trump campaign, said the Senate Intelligence Committee.

“On numerous occasions,
Manafort sought to secretly share internal campaign information with Kilimnik,” including polling and strategy
details, it said.

The report said the reason for the
sharing the information was not clear but it noted that it took place just as Russian GRU intelligence and a government-linked social media operation actively sought to
tilt the election toward Trump.

“Taken as a whole,
Manafort’s high-level access and willingness to share information with
individuals closely associated with Russian intelligence services, particularly Kilimnik and associates of Oleg Deripaska,
represented a grave counterintelligence threat.”

The Senate report, submitted after three-year investigation into Russian election meddling in 2016, described numerous incidents in which the Trump campaign actively
sought Moscow’s help and WikiLeaks to damage the campaign of Hillary Clinton.

The report came as US intelligence has warned of active Russian attempts to interfere in the current presidential race in Trump’s favour.

The US president has
repeatedly denied colluding with Russia, calling
investigations a “witch hunt.”

Manafort was dropped from
the campaign in
August 2016. According to the report, he knew Kilimnik and Deripaska for
years from his work with them in Ukraine, where he was a political consultant.

Manafort was convicted for tax and bank fraud and
money laundering related to his Ukraine business, but unrelated to the Trump campaign. He has been sentenced to seven and a half years in jail.

The 71-year-old was released in May to home
confinement to protect him from the coronavirus threat.

Trump has
repeatedly suggested he could pardon Manafort.