Paul Manafort held secret meetings with Julian Assange inside Ecuadorian embassy in 2016: report

President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort reportedly held secret meetings with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in the months prior to the 2016 U.S. election.

Multiple sources told The Guardian that "Manafort went to see Assange in 2013, 2015 and in spring 2016" at the Ecuadorian embassy, where the WikiLeaks founder has been holed up due to fears of being arrested.

It was not immediately clear why Manafort met with Assange, but some of the meetings coincide with then-candidate Trump's 2016 campaign.

A well-placed source has told the Guardian that Manafort went to see Assange around March 2016. Months later WikiLeaks released a stash of Democratic emails stolen by Russian intelligence officers.

Internal Ecuadorian embassy documents confirmed that Assange met with Manafort as well as unnamed "Russians," The Guardian said.