US Department of Justice on Saturday released documents, indicating that a top advisor to then-candidate Donald Trump said as early as the summer of 2016 that Ukraine, not Russia, was behind a hack of Democratic party emails.

Trump and his surrogates have suggested that Kiev hacked Democratic National Committee servers and planted evidence to frame Russia, as a way of undermining the legitimacy of the US leader’s election.

Trump has pressured Ukraine’s president to investigate that debunked conspiracy theory as well as his election rival Joe Biden — a move at the crux of an impeachment investigation against him in the House of Representatives.

The hundreds of pages of documents out Saturday were part of an initial tranche released to US media outlets Buzzfeed and CNN, which sued the government for access to notes from the investigation conducted by special counsel Robert Mueller into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Earlier on Friday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had said that public hearing in an impeachment enquiry into Trump could be expected this month.

The remarks came a day after the Democratic-controlled House approved mostly along party lines a resolution that establishes procedures for public impeachment hearings and the release of deposition transcripts, among other things.

Pelosi initiated the impeachment inquiry into Trump in late September after an anonymous whistleblower raised concerns about the White House’s interactions with Ukraine, including a July 25 phone call between Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky.

Trump was alleged to have abused power by using a military aid to pressure Zelensky into investigating former US Vice President Joe Biden, a top-tier 2020 Democratic presidential contender, so as to help his re-election campaign.

Last month, Trump had described his impeachment as a “lynching” and he managed once again to create a political firestorm around race while frustrating members of his party and drawing condemnation from lawmakers who hold his political fate in their hands.

Earlier in October, Ukraine’s former president had said that he discussed investments with President Donald Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, in 2017, but that he never discussed Ukrainian companies with any US official.

In July 2016, WikiLeaks began publishing thousands of Democratic National Committee emails, embarrassing Trump’s election rival Hillary Clinton. US intelligence later said that the emails were hacked by Russian spies and handed over to WikiLeaks.

The documents released Saturday also showed how Trump, his top aides and family members repeatedly discussed how to get the hacked Democratic emails that WikiLeaks had obtained.

(With AFP inputs)