The newly unsealed Statement of the Offense posted online by the Justice Department Monday reveals that a Russian operative known as the Professor told Trump campaign foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos that Russia had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton in the form of "thousands of emails" in April 2016.
A timeline of Russian cyber attacks shows that hackers breached John Podesta's email on March 19, 2016 and infiltrated the DNC's network (for a second time) in April. The media does not start reporting on the hacks until June 14, 2016.
When questioned, Papadopoulos downplayed the Professor's relevance and connections to Russian officials and lied to the FBI, saying he received that information prior to knowing he would be a part of the Trump campaign:
Via Buzzfeed:
Papadopoulos' guilty plea to charges of lying to the FBI provides the first suggestion that the Trump campaign knew well before its Democratic rivals that Russia had hacked Democratic computer systems and had purloined thousands of Clinton-related emails.
(...)
But it's not clear who in the Trump campaign Papadopoulos told about the emails or how far up the campaign's hierarchy the information might have gone. The document identifies Papadopoulos' campaign supervisor only as “the Campaign Supervisor” and provides no names for other campaign officials with whom he communicated.
(...)
The summary contains no indication that Papadopoulos passed the information about the emails on to the campaign, but the document says he continued to message the senior policy adviser and a “high-ranking campaign official” about his contacts with the Russians until at least August 2016.
Full story: Trump Adviser Knew Russia Had Clinton Emails Before The Hacks Were Discovered (Buzzfeed)