Louise Mensch: the former British MP who scooped US media on Trump's Russian ties

In the journalistic race to get to the bottom of one of the most closely guarded secrets in Washington – the investigation into the Trump team’s contacts with Moscow – one of the biggest scoops came from an unexpected source: the British former MP and novelist, Louise Mensch.

On the eve of the November election, Mensch published a sensational story reporting that a special intelligence court in Washington had granted a warrant to allow the FBI to conduct surveillance of “US persons” in an investigation of possible contacts between Russian banks and the Trump organisation.

Two months later, however, the BBC put out a story echoing Mensch’s original report about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa) court warrant issued in October to allow the justice department to look into transfers and communications between the Russian banks and Trump associate – and that US intelligence agencies were investigating the link.

However, it seems increasingly clear that Mensch landed an extraordinary scoop that had eluded the best investigative journalists in the US. Her explanation is that her vocal advocacy on behalf of UK and US intelligence agencies since former NSA contractor Edward Snowden’s revelations about mass surveillance led her sources to trust her.