Boris Johnson contacted Elon Musk on behalf of the Evening Standard owner, Evgeny Lebedev, as part of an attempt to get the US tech billionaire to support the ailing newspaper, leaked files suggest.

Johnson’s private office, which is taxpayer-subsidised, emailed an executive close to Musk in June 2024, forwarding a business proposal from Lord Lebedev.

“Dear Elon, I admire what you’ve done for liberty. Can the next step in the fight be putting together your AI power behind a 200-year-old trusted news voice called the London Evening Standard?” Lebedev wrote.

“My thoughts are in an age of deepfakes and general confusion about information this would be a powerful pairing. If you’re up for a chat I am up for coming to see you.”

The email to the owner of X is contained in a leak from Johnson’s office seen by the Guardian. The leak was obtained by Distributed Denial of Secrets, a US non-profit that archives data leaks.

The email is likely to renew questions over foreign influence in UK politics. Musk has made no secret of his desire to sway political views through his social media platform, which he has owned since 2022. He is a fierce critic of Keir Starmer, especially over immigration and the grooming gangs scandal.

While Lebedev does not expressly raise the question of investment in the Evening Standard, the request for some kind of partnership will also raise questions over foreign ownership of the UK press.

Parliament recently passed legislation placing limits on foreign ownership of media organisations meaning foreign states can only own stakes of up to 15% – but the rules do not apply to foreign individuals.

It is unclear whether Musk responded to the business offer, which was sent a month after Lebedev announced his decision to close the daily print edition of the historic London title and rebrand it as a weekly news sheet, the Standard.

At the time of the email, Musk was pouring much of his financial and media firepower into backing the election of Donald Trump. He has since taken a wider interest in European politics and endorsed far-right political parties across Europe, including Germany’s AfD and, briefly Reform UK, though later he expressed doubt in the abilities of its leader, Nigel Farage.

The email seen by the Guardian shows the former prime minister’s staff playing the role of a fixer for Lebedev, a longtime friend of Johnson, who controversially made him a peer in 2020. Lebedev had staunchly backed Johnson via the Evening Standard throughout Johnson’s time as London mayor.

In a statement to the Guardian, Lebedev said: “Why do you think it is remarkable for me to reach out to one of the most successful businessmen of the age? This is how business works. We talk to each other and make proposals and plans. Pretty much every business in the world is thinking about how it can harness AI.”

Musk and Johnson are thought to have met on at least one occasion since Johnson left office. An itinerary seen by the Guardian includes a 30-minute video call during the UP Summit in Texas in October 2023, eight months before Johnson’s office forwarded Lebedev’s request to Musk.

Forwarding the email, the staffer in Johnson’s office acknowledges the request is “slightly random” before explaining that “a friend of Boris’s asked if we could relay the message below to Elon. His name is Lord Evgeny Lebedev – who owns the London Evening Standard newspaper (along with a couple of other outlets and numerous other business interests).”

The staffer says Johnson “has no personal interest in this – other than a longstanding belief in supporting a strong free press”.

Johnson’s friendship with Lebedev, who also has a minority stake in the Independent website and is the son of a billionaire former colonel in the KGB, Alexander Lebedev, has often been the subject of controversy.

The former prime minister has regularly attended parties hosted by Lebedev, including a much-discussed gathering in April 2018 when Johnson, who was then foreign secretary, attended Lebedev’s Tuscan palazzo without his security detail.

Daily Mail and GB News

The leaked files also shed light on Johnson’s relationship with other UK media, which has been the source of at least two lucrative contracts since he resigned as prime minister. Documents suggest he was offered £500,000 for his columns in the Daily Mail, with additional payments for bonus podcasts or other appearances.

A letter from the group managing editor of Associated Newspapers, the publisher of the Daily Mail, to Johnson offers the payment for 46 Saturday columns over the course of the year. It is not clear whether the text of the letter reflects the version of the contract ultimately signed by Johnson and the paper.

The announcement of Johnson’s recruitment as a Mail columnist, one day after a parliamentary committee concluded he had lied to parliament over lockdown parties in Downing Street, prompted an investigation by the government’s Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (Acoba).

It found that his failure to consult the body until half an hour before taking the role constituted an unambiguous breach of its rules, prompting its chair to implore the government to grant it further powers.

A copy of Johnson’s contract with GB News, the rightwing broadcaster that hired the former prime minister as a presenter in October 2023, also appears in the files – revealing that it hoped the former prime minister would front its 2024 election coverage.

It stipulated that Johnson would only be paid if he presented multiple editions of his own TV show and appeared alongside the channel’s other presenters. Johnson has not fulfilled any of these obligation.

The media regulator Ofcom is currently under pressure to ban politicians including Farage from acting as presenters on the channel. It has previously concluded that the British public was “instinctively uncomfortable” with politicians hosting current affairs programmes but there was “no clear consensus for an outright ban”.

Ofcom has found GB News breached impartiality rules by paying Conservative MPs hundreds of thousands of pounds to serve as news presenters but it stopped short of imposing sanctions on the channel.

According to the contract seen by the Guardian, Johnson’s reporting duties for the channel were supposed to have included fronting a primetime programme six times a year, an “on-location” live audience special, regular live contributions to other presenters’ GB News shows, occasional feature appearances, and helming 2024 general election coverage.

In exchange, Johnson would receive £350,000 plus expenses, with bonus payments of £75,000 and £37,500 for optional additional presenting work around the UK and US elections. Despite the contract, Johnson’s only substantive appearance seems to have been a one-hour sitdown interview with another GB News presenter, Camilla Tominey.

GB News said: “As usual, the Guardian is incorrect. GB News has an ongoing arrangement with Mr Johnson as a contributor, and we are delighted to do so. Beyond this, which is already a matter of public record, we do not comment on or share private and confidential arrangements with any of our staff.”

Johnson did not respond directly to questions about Musk, Lebedev, GB News or Associated Newspapers. In a statement to the Guardian, he denied the suggestion his private office misused the subsidy scheme intended to support an ex-PM’s public duties. The public duty costs allowance (PDCA) should not be used for private or commercial purposes.

“This story is rubbish,” Johnson said. “The PDCA has been used entirely in accordance with the rules. The Guardian should change its name to Pravda.”