The story involves a Russian double agent, the British and Dutch intelligence agencies, an American investigative journalist, Middle Eastern royal families and the son-in-law of the President of the United States.

That’s a cast of characters that could easily pack out a John Le Carré novel, or the latest movie in the Bourne franchise. But it’s also the dramatic personae for an astonishing scoop published this week in Vanity Fair, based on a book by the journalist Matthew Cole – who appears to have got hold of remarkably sensitive information from the mobile phone of Jared Kushner, the husband of Ivanka Trump.

Read more: The extraordinary Kushner claims deepening the stench around Trump’s White House