Holy shit. It really is "but her emails!"
Timeline: Campaign knew Russia had Clinton emails months before Trump 'joke'
Months before candidate Donald Trump asked Russia to “find” Hillary Clinton's missing private server emails — a statement the campaign later called a joke — a Russian operative told a campaign aide "the Russians had emails of Clinton," according to a plea agreement released Monday.
In the first guilty plea of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, George Papadopoulos admitted lying to the FBI about contact with Russian agents that offered the campaign "thousands" of damaging emails about Clinton. Papadopoulos claims he would eventually be told by a campaign supervisor to travel to Russia to meet with government officials "if feasible," a trip that never happened.
In the context of the timeline of events, Papadopoulos was told of Russian hacking before the rest of the country, and weeks before the Trump campaign made its first denial of Russian involvement in the election.