Russia used Republican political operative Paul Manafort, the WikiLeaks website and others to try to influence the 2016 US presidential election to help now-US President Donald Trump’s campaign, a Senate intelligence panel report said on Tuesday.

WikiLeaks played a key role in Russia’s effort to assist Republican Trump against Democrat Hillary Clinton and likely knew it was helping Russian intelligence, said the report, which is likely to be the most definitive public account of the 2016 election controversy.

The report found President Vladimir Putin personally directed the Russian efforts to hack computer networks and accounts affiliated with the Democratic Party and leak information damaging to Clinton.

The panel, formally called the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, also alleged Manafort collaborated with Russians, including oligarch Oleg Deripaska and an alleged Russian intelligence operative, Konstantin Kilimnik, before, during and after the election.

The panel found Manafort’s role and proximity to Trump created opportunities for Russian intelligence, saying his “high-level access and willingness to share information with individuals closely affiliated with the Russian intelligence services... represented a grave counterintelligence threat”.

It was not clear what effect, if any, the report might have on the current US presidential campaign in which Trump faces Joe Biden in the November 3 US election.

Opinion polls show former vice-president Biden has built an expansive lead in nearly every battleground state that Trump won narrowly in 2016, as the Republican’s approval numbers tumble amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Russia’s alleged election interference, which Moscow denies, sparked a 2-year-long US investigation headed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. He found no conclusive evidence of coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign in a report released last year. He pointed at 10 instances in which Trump may have attempted to impede his investigation.