Donald Trump and son 'offered access' to hacked Wikileaks documents during 2016 campaign

In September 2016, then-candidate Donald Trump, his son Donald Trump Jr, and others were offered a decryption key to gain access to leaked Wikileaks documents.

The email was provided to investigators working on the Congressional inquiry into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign team and Russian officials during the 2016 US election.

CNN initially reported the email was sent on 4 September but the Washington Post obtained a copy of it and it was actually sent 10 days later on 14 September, just one day after Wikileaks had posted links on Twitter to a trove of hacked emails from the Democratic National Convention (DNC).

There is no indication whether any of the recipients acted on the email.

Mr Trump Jr has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and during testimony in front of the House Intelligence Committee on 8 December said he did not remember receiving this particular email.

The month after this email Wikileaks would begin leaking emails from John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman.

Congress is also unable to identify the sender of the email, someone calling themselves "Mike Erickson" described themselves as the head of an aviation management company and used a Yahoo account.

This person addressed the email to Mr Trump Jr, his personal assistant, the current White House Communications Director Hope Hicks, and Trump Organisation lawyer Michael Cohen, others in the company, and Mr Trump - who has famously said he does not use email.

The email - subject line "Trump: Another Wikileaks DNC Upload" - also indicated items from former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who served under former President George W Bush, would be available on DCLeaks.com. That was also made public by Wikileaks the day before the email was sent.

It is not an uncommon for Wikileaks to post a file of leaked documents online, but lock it so that only people with the specific decryption key can access it.

Mr Trump Jr has also had prior contact with Wikileaks, by his own admission.

He released direct messages on Twitter he had exchanged with Wikileaks after a report from The Atlantic magazine brought the communications to light.

Appropriately, he tweeted: "Here is the entire chain of messages with @wikileaks (with my whopping 3 responses) which one of the congressional committees has chosen to selectively leak. How ironic!"

Congress is trying to figure out whether there is a link between those communications and the decryption key email.

Mr Trump Jr, according to sources who spoke to CNN, said the messages he shared were akin to speaking to any major media outlet.

The decryption email is just the latest in a string of revelations in the investigation into alleged collusion - conducted in parallel by Congress and the FBI with special prosecutor Robert Mueller.

Former campaign manager Paul Manafort, deputy Rick Gates, and aide George Papadopoulos have all been indicted already.

Mr Manafort and Mr Gates were brought up on unrelated fraud and financial crimes and Mr Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to one count of lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia-linked individuals.

On 1 December, former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI as well. He was indicted for making false statements about the nature of a 29 December 2016 conversation he had with former Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak.

Both investigations are continuing.