Al Sharpton, a renowned civil rights leader, former presidential candidate and a talk show host, is denying claims that he once served as a key FBI mob informant back in the 1980s.

In a lengthy report published Monday, The Smoking Gun alleged that the 59-year-old activist played a critical role collecting information on prominent mobsters in New York City. The allegations are based on data collected through interviews, court records, and hundreds of pages of documents obtained through a request invoking the Freedom of Information Act.

According to the The Smoking Gun, the documents state that one Genovese crime family member admitted to speaking openly to Sharpton about extortion, death threats and other crimes while Sharpton used a FBI briefcase to record the conversation. The report states that this information led to the bugging of two Genovese family social clubs, three cars and a dozen phone lines approved by several different federal judges. The Smoking Gun also states that Sharpton worked for the FBI/NYPD and served as "Confidential Informant No. 7.″

However, in a press conference Tuesday morning, the MSNBC TV host said that he wasn't an informant, but rather he was just cooperating with the FBI for two years. "I'm not a rat, I'm a cat," Sharpton reportedly said, according to Time.

Sharpton also explained to The New York Daily News that he reached out to FBI authorities after receiving death threats over his efforts to get African-Americans more work in the music industry.

"If you're a victim of a threat, you're not an informant - you're a victim trying to protect yourself," he told The Daily News. "I encourage kids all the time to work with law enforcement, you're acting like it's a scandal for me to do that?"

"The claim is I helped get the mob, not that I was in the mob," Sharpton said. "I was never told I was an informant."

Sharpton did, however, admit to wearing a wire to record conversations. "The conversations were recorded, and I would record them today," he said. "We are victims trying to stop something."