CIA director Mike Pompeo met with a conspiracy theorist at the request of Donald Trump to discuss discredited claims that hacking of Democrat emails during the presidential election was an inside job.

The US spy chief held talks with former US intelligence official William Binney, who has challenged the official conclusion that the hacking was the work of Russian agents.

US intelligence agencies, including the CIA, have said Russia hacked into Democratic National Committee (DNC) computers to steal and leak data in a bid to influence last year's presidential election.

Mr Binney, a whistleblower and former code-breaker at the National Security Agency (NSA), claims the DNC emails were leaked by a party insider.

He has repeatedly alleged intelligence officials were not "being honest" about the leaks and has espoused this fringe theory on a number of media outlets, including Kremlin-funded broadcaster RT.

Mr Trump has previously questioned the official US intelligence conclusion and has refused to accept that Russia sought to swing the election in his favour.

Mr Binney told The Intercept he met Mr Pompeo on 24 October after the President urged the CIA director to talk to him if he wanted "to know the facts".

He claimed the director concluded their meeting by telling him he would like him to meet with the FBI and NSA as well.

The highly unusual meeting lasted between 30 minutes and an hour. It came following "weeks" of urging by Mr Trump despite many people inside the agency reportedly being uncomfortable with it.

Trump says he was being sarcastic about asking Russia to publish Clinton's emails

The CIA did not deny the meeting took place but said Mr Pompeo "stands by and has always stood by the January 2017 intelligence community assessment" that Russia was behind the hacking.

However, he faced questions about why he agreed to meet a conspiracy theorist who has repeatedly and publicly accused intelligence agencies of dishonesty.

“This is crazy," one former CIA officer told The Intercept. "You’ve got all these intelligence agencies saying the Russians did the hack. To deny that is like coming out with the theory that the Japanese didn’t bomb Pearl Harbor.”

Mr Pompeo has already faced scrutiny of his impartiality after declaring last month that Russian interference in the presidential election did not affect its outcome, a claim that is not supported by official intelligence.