A former adviser to Donald Trump handed documents on the energy industry to a Russian spy, according to prosecutors.

Carter Page, who was a foreign policy aide to the President before the election, met occasionally with Victor Podobnyy while the intelligence operative was working in the US, documents filed by prosecutors say.

Mr Podobnyy was one of three men indicted by the FBI in 2015 on suspicion of working for Russia's SVR foreign intelligence service.

He was later charged in connection with a Cold War-style spy ring.

At the time, Mr Page was an energy consultant working in New York.


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Prosecution documents say that Mr Podobnyy tried to recruit Mr Page.

In March 2016, Mr Trump listed Mr Page as was one of five members of his foreign policy team in a meeting with the Washington Post.

His staff members later said Mr Page had no formal role in his campaign and the White House now says the President has no relationship with him.

But the energy consultant is among the Trump associates under scrutiny as part of FBI and congressional committees investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Mr Page's meetings with Mr Podobnyy took place about three years before the then-presidential candidate listed him as an adviser to the campaign.

The court filings include a transcript of a conversation Mr Podobnyy had with Igor Sporyshev, who was also charged in the spy ring.

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The transcript, published by Buzzfeed, does not list Mr Page by name, but calls him "Male-1" and describes him as a "consultant working in New York City".

Mr Podobnyy, after saying that they will need to "spend a couple of borrowed million", says about Mr Page: "I like that he takes on everything... For now his enthusiasm works for me. I also promised him a lot."

The energy consultant was later accused of meeting with two associates of Russian president Vladimir Putin in summer 2016, before his links to the Trump campaign came to an end, something Mr Page denies.

In a statement, Mr Page admitted that he had "shared basic immaterial information and publicly available research documents" with Mr Podobnyy.

He said the information was "nothing more than a few samples from the far more detailed lectures" he delivered at New York University in 2013.

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Mr Trump has not responded to the allegations directly but tweeted on Monday, saying: "The real story turns out to be SURVEILLANCE and LEAKING! Find the leakers."

It comes after The Washington Post reported that the United Arab Emirates arranged a secret meeting in January between an American businessman supporting Mr Trump and a Russian close to Mr Putin.

The Post claimed it was part of an apparent effort to establish a back-channel line of communication between Moscow and the incoming President.

The Trump administration has been under pressure to deny any links between his campaign and senior Kremlin figures.

The meeting took place nine days before Mr Trump's inauguration, the newspaper says.

Mr Podobnyy and Mr Sporyshev's co-accused, Evgeny Buryakov, pleaded guilty to conspiring to spy for the Russians in March last year.

The FBI was unable to arrest Mr Podobnyy and Mr Sporyshev as they had left the US by the time the trio were indicted.

Although they were never put on trial, the Department of Justice said the investigation had found they had spied.

Buryakov was sentenced to 30 months in jail.