Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump appeared to call on Russian government hackers to find personal emails deleted by his rival Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Responding to allegations that Russia was behind the hacking of other emails belonging to the Democratic Party - an act that Mrs Clinton's campaign has claimed was carried out by Russian intelligence to damage the party and help the businessman - Mr Trump urged the Russians to locate the missing emails, while admitting that he did not know if the Kremlin was behind the act.
Mr Trump’s apparent exhortation to the Kremlin essentially amounts to granting approval to a foreign country to carry out cyber-spying against a former US cabinet member concerning government business.
"Russia, if you are listening, I hope you are able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing," he said at a press conference in Florida, requesting hackers to find and release the emails that Mrs Clinton controversially did not turn over to the State Department when she was secretary of state.
“I think you would probably be rewarded mightily by our press,” he added.
This was despite saying at the same news conference that he didn’t know who was behind the hacks. “Nobody know if it’s Russia,” he said.
The Clinton camp seized on Mr Trump’s encouragement to Russian hackers.
"This has to be the first time that a major presidential candidate has actually encouraged a foreign power to conduct espionage against his political opponent," said Jake Sullivan, senior policy adviser for the "Hillary for America" campaign.
“This has gone from being a matter of curiosity, and a matter of politics, to being a national security issue.”
The New York businessman is a self-professed admirer of Russian president Vladimir Putin but has denied in the wake of the Democratic emails scandal that he has "nothing to do with Russia," though he claimed to have made a profit of $60 million selling a house in Florida to a Russian.
The billionaire property and entertainment mogul later appeared to backtrack on his remarks, tweeting: “If Russia or any other country or person has Hillary Clinton’s 33,000 illegally deleted emails, perhaps they should share them with the FBI!”
Mr Trump’s remarks follow a long-trodden line of attack against the Democrat who has been criticised for using a private email for official government business and for her handling of classified information.
The Democratic Party was hit with email problems of its own when hackers - suspected by the Obama administration and the Clinton campaign to be working for Russian intelligence agencies - stole internal emails and leaked them, damaging the party just days before Mrs Clinton was named presidential nominee.
