The connection between Donald Trump s presidential campaign and Vladimir Putin s government in Russia has been denied by the Republican nominee repeatedly. Despite praising him and at times defending his actions (like the annexation of Ukraine), Trump has rejected reporting and accusations linking him to the Russian strongman.But a new report from Mother Jones appears to shed new light on the Trump-Russia connection.In June, the former Western intelligence officer who spent almost two decades on Russian intelligence matters and who now works with a US firm that gathers information on Russia for corporate clients was assigned the task of researching Trump s dealings in Russia and elsewhere, according to the former spy and his associates in this American firm. This was for an opposition research project originally financed by a Republican client critical of the celebrity mogul. (Before the former spy was retained, the project s financing switched to a client allied with Democrats.)  It started off as a fairly general inquiry,  says the former spook, who asks not to be identified. But when he dug into Trump, he notes, he came across troubling information indicating connections between Trump and the Russian government. According to his sources, he says,  there was an established exchange of information between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin of mutual benefit. The spy tells the magazine that the Trump-Putin exchange is  an extraordinary situation. According to the report (reviewed by Mother Jones):  Russian regime has been cultivating, supporting and assisting TRUMP for at least 5 years. Aim, endorsed by PUTIN, has been to encourage splits and divisions in western alliance. Trump s former manager Paul Manafort is currently the subject of an FBI inquiry, probing his connection to foreign governments associated with Putin. Manafort, a Republican fixer, worked on behalf of pro-Putin government forces while in Ukraine.At the same time as these connections have been uncovered and probe, Russian media has been amplifying revelations found in the email hack of Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta that have been published via WikiLeaks.U.S. intelligence agencies have tracked those hacking attacks back to Russian forces as well.Many roads in this election are leading to Russia.Featured image via Flickr