The FBI has tried to meet with two self-proclaimed "sex coaches" held in a Thai jail who claim to have information about Russian efforts to meddle in the 2016 election, CNN reported Tuesday.

FBI agents contacted Thailand's Immigration Bureau last week to try to set up a meeting with Anastasia Vashukevich and Alexander Kirillov, both Belarusian citizens, CNN reported, citing a high-level Thai official.

Thai officials turned down that request, however, because only the detainees' lawyers and family members are permitted access to them.

The U.S. Embassy in Bangkok referred CNN's questions about the matter to Thai law enforcement.

Vashukevich and Kirillov sent a handwritten letter to the U.S. Embassy last month offering to provide evidence of Russian meddling to U.S. authorities in exchange for asylum.

The U.S. intelligence community has previously concluded that Moscow sought to interfere in the 2016 presidential election and favored President Trump's candidacy. Special counsel Robert Mueller is conducting a criminal investigation into the matter.

Vashukevich and Kirillov were among several Russian-speaking sex coaches arrested at a seminar in Thailand last month for working without permits.

Vashukevich, who is known on social media by the name Nastya Rybka, claims that she is the former mistress of Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch close to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

She alleges that she witnessed meetings between Deripaska and unnamed Americans in 2016 and 2017. Deripaska denies having an affair with Vashukevich.