In August 2016, when the US presidential election campaign was in full swing, two top officials in Donald Trump’s team had a rendezvous at the Grand Havana Room, a members-only cigar club just a few blocks from Trump Tower in New York.

At a time when publication of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee was dominating headlines,  Paul Manafort, the longtime Republican lobbyist who was Mr Trump’s campaign chairman, and Rick Gates, his deputy, met a Russian national who the FBI alleged has ties to the country’s intelligence services.

Although Mr Manafort and Mr Gates had worked with the Russian, Konstantin Kilimnik, in Ukraine, the meeting itself was curious enough, given the intense focus from the media and law enforcement on whether Russia was behind the email hacking.