The FBI is looking into the foreign business connections of ex-Donald Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, NBC News reported Monday.
News of the preliminary inquiry comes a day after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid suggested FBI James Comey had "explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors, and the Russian government."
"None of it is true," Manafort told NBC News. "There's no investigation going on by the FBI that I'm aware of," dismissing speculation as "Democratic propaganda."
"This is all political propaganda, meant to deflect" from the FBI's examination of newly found emails that might be relevant to its investigation of Hillary Clinton's private email server, he said.
Manafort quit the Trump campaign in August amid reports Manafort's firm lobbied on behalf of Ukrainian political figures in the United States.
NBC News reported at the time, Manafort was a key player in multi-million-dollar business propositions with Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs, raising questions about the pro-Russian bent of the Trump candidacy.
More recently, Clinton supporters have alleged Trump and his allies have aided the Russians in hacking emails from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta, The Hill noted.
"Americans have every right to be concerned about what they see in terms of Trump advisors and their closeness with the Kremlin, Trump's policies vis-a-vis Russia, Trump's potential financial interest, all of those things ought to be of deep concern to voters," California Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, told NBC News.
Schiff said though specifics of FBI or other intelligence agency inquiries should not be a matter of public discussion, "here, where the director has discussed an investigation involving one candidate, it opens the director up to claims of bias if he doesn't discuss other potential investigations."
Clinton supporters have alleged Trump and his allies have aided the Russians in hacking emails from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta.