A notorious political blogger has claimed he has obtained access to the entire email account of a senior SNP MP.
Craig Murray, a former British diplomat once jailed for contempt of court, said he now planned to publish the messages from Stewart McDonald.
The blogger claimed the emails were shared with him by an unnamed third party and he had no part in hacking the MP's account.
Murray said he "had no hand in obtaining the emails" but was "grateful they have been so generously shared" with him.
The Record reported this week how McDonald, who represents Glasgow South, claimed his emails were hacked by a Russian spy service.
The MP feared the messages would be made public after he fell victim to a phishing scam.
In a blog post, Murray said: "I want to reassure Mr McDonald that his hysterical ranting about being hacked by a state intelligence service, when he appears by his own account to have fallen for a phishing scam the average 12 year old would see through, is hilariously wide of the mark."
He added: "What will be published is material in which there is a legitimate public interest, relating to interactions with NATO, the British military and MOD, the Integrity Initiative and journalists in that crooked network, parliamentary committees, intelligence agencies, foreign powers, UK government defence institutes and conservative think tanks."
Murray continued: "There is much of interest in the cache, including emails direct to and from Nicola Sturgeon, showing the toxic relationships within the SNP group at Westminster, where McDonald regards himself as in a very small minority of Sturgeon loyalists."
McDonald, who was first elected in 2015, last week explained how his email account had been compromised.
After clicking on a document sent from the staff member's real email address, the MP entered details into a login page.
Several days later, the same staff member informed McDonald he had been locked out of his personal email account because of suspicious activity - and that he had never sent him the email with the login page.
McDonald said he decided to go public to warn others of the risks and limit the potential damage.
He tweeted: "Over the past couple of weeks, I have been dealing with a sophisticated and targeted spear phishing hack of my personal email account, and the personal email account belonging to one of my staff. These hacks are a criminal offence."
Murray was the UK ambassador for Uzbekistan between 2002 and 2004 before being removed from post after a fall out with the Foreign Office.
He was sentenced in May 2021 to eight months in prison for contempt of court.
The ex-diplomat had watched two days of Alex Salmond's trial in March 2020 from the public gallery of Edinburgh’s High Court and wrote about it on his website.
Judges subsequently ruled that Murray was in contempt of court relating to material capable of identifying four of the women accusing the former SNP leader of sexual abuse.
He lost a legal challenge against his conviction last year.
The Record has asked McDonald and the SNP for comment.
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