A former British intelligence officer says he was recruited by a Republican operative with claimed links to the Trump campaign to verify hacked emails belonging to Hillary Clinton.

In a blog post, security analyst Matt Tait said Republican operative Peter Smith, now deceased, had asked him for help authenticating emails obtained by a source from the “Dark Web”.

Mr Smith claimed to be working for Donald Trump’s then-foreign policy adviser General Michael Flynn, Mr Tait, a former GCHQ information security specialist, wrote.

The emails never materialised, but Mr Tait said the encounter – which occurred around the time WikiLeaks had released 30,000 hacked emails belonging to the Democratic National Committee – shocked him.

“[Smith] said that his team had been contacted by someone on the ‘dark web’; that this person had the emails from Hillary Clinton’s private email server … and that Smith wanted to establish if the emails were genuine,” he wrote on the Lawfare blog.

“If so, he wanted to ensure that they became public prior to the election. What he wanted from me was to determine if the emails were genuine or not.”

Before he was contacted by Mr Smith, Mr Tait had gained prominence during the campaign as an expert on cyber security issues.

He said he warned the political operative that the emails were possibly stolen as part of a “wider Russian campaign against the United States”, but Mr Smith “didn’t seem to care”.

Mr Tait chose to go public with his story after the GOP operative’s campaign to obtain Secretary Clinton’s emails was revealed by the Wall Street Journal last month.

Mr Smith, who died shortly after speaking with the newspaper, said he had worked independent of the Trump campaign.

But Mr Tait said the GOP operative had provided documentation suggesting he had links to prominent Trump aides Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway.

Both aides, who are now top advisers to the President, deny any involvement with Mr Smith.

Mr Smith had a long history as an opposition researcher for Republican campaigns and had compiled damaging material on the Clinton campaign.

According to Mr Tait, it was likely Mr Smith “was operating with some degree of co-ordination” with the Trump campaign, despite his denials to the Wall Street Journal.

“He never expressed to me any discomfort with the possibility that the emails he was seeking were potentially from a Russian front, a likelihood he was happy to acknowledge,” Mr Tait wrote.

“If they were genuine, they would hurt Clinton’s chances, and therefore help Trump.”

Mr Tait said he ended his correspondence with Mr Smith in September last year after he grew “extremely uncomfortable with the situation” and refused Mr Smith’s request that he sign a non-disclosure agreement.

His story is the latest revelation that connects the Trump campaign to alleged Russian political interference.

Earlier in the year, General Flynn was forced to step down as White House national security adviser after misleading the public about meetings with the Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

A special counsel has now been appointed to investigate Russia’s role in the 2016 election and to probe possible links between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.

Mr Trump sparked fresh controversy when he linked his decision to fire former FBI chief James Comey to the Russia investigation.