President Donald Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort secretly met with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on multiple occasions, with the last meeting occurring a few months before WikiLeaks released hacked Democratic National Committee emails in the summer of 2016, The Guardian reported Tuesday.

Read the full Guardian report here.

Manafort met with Assange in 2013, 2015 and "around March 2016," sources told The Guardian. Trump hired him at the end of March. The details of the meetings were unknown.

Manafort, in a statement issued through a representative, expressly denied meeting with Assange, called the story "totally false and deliberately libelous," and said his team was considering "all legal options" against The Guardian.

"I have never met Julian Assange or anyone connected to him. I have never been contacted by anyone connected to Wikileaks, either directly or indirectly. I have never reached out to Assange or Wikileaks on any matter," Manafort said.

WikiLeaks denied the report in a tweet, saying it "is willing to bet the Guardian a million dollars and its editor's head that Manafort never met Assange."