chairman, emails reviewed by The Post show. The two were in frequent contact during Manafort’s tenure at Trump’s campaign, according to court records.

A Russian army veteran who had trained at a military language academy known as a feeder school for the intelligence services, Kilimnik had worked for Manafort since 2005, when he began serving as a translator for Manafort’s Ukraine operation.

In documents filed in court last year, Mueller’s prosecutors wrote that Gates, Manafort’s deputy, said Kilimnik told him he had formerly been an officer in the GRU, the Russian military intelligence unit accused of engineering the 2016 election interference. Prosecutors said the FBI has assessed that Kilimnik’s intelligence ties continued into 2016.

Kilimnik was also well known at the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, and officials there met with himin several subsequent meetings, including one in January 2017 when the Russian was in Washington for Trump’s inauguration.

In court, Manafort’s lawyers contended that he was candid about the discussions when reminded by prosecutors and denied that his account has been inconsistent.

'An extremely sensitive issue'

There are also indications in the transcript of last week’s hearing that prosecutors have explored whether it was at the Manhattan cigar bar that Manafort shared polling data related to the 2016 White House race with Kilimnik — another topic about which Manafort lied, they allege.

The sharing of that data was first disclosed, apparently inadvertently, in a court filing by Manafort’s attorneys last month. At the time, it was unclear when Manafort passed along the information to his Russian employee — as well as the