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In an email to Trump confidante Roger Stone in 2016, Corsi acknowledged that hackers were behind the email theft, according to newly released messages.

Despite that admission, both Corsi and Stone played key roles promoting the conspiracy theory about Rich. Stone became one of the first major figures in Trump's orbit to suggest Rich was murdered over the emails, tweeting on August 10, 2016 that Rich had "ties to DNC heist."

In 2017, after Rich's parents begged right-wing media personalities to stop pushing conspiracy theories about their son, Corsi put the blame for the email theft on Rich in a three-part InfoWars series.

In his InfoWars posts and a series of YouTube videos, Corsi portrayed Rich as a disaffected supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) who stole the emails to get revenge against the DNC and paid for it with his life. Corsi wrote Rich had clearly been "implicated in breaches of email systems." The young staffer was, according to Corsi, the "likely perpetrator."

Corsi's theory helped fuel conspiracists on the right who claim, without evidence, that Rich was murdered on the orders of Hillary Clinton. But emails from special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into the Trump campaign and Russia show that Corsi knew all along that it really was hackers who gave the emails to WikiLeaks.

Mifsud, who claimed to have high-level Kremlin contacts, told Papadopoulos in April 2016 that the Kremlin had dirt on Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of emails--well before the Russian hacks on the Democratic National Committee or Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta were made public. Papadopoulos told the FBI that he learned of the Kremlin "dirt" before joining the Trump campaign, but that was a lie, according to prosecutors. He had already been a campaign adviser for well over a month by the time Mifsud told him about the stolen emails.

Mifsud was also apparently eager to connect Papadopoulos with his current wife, Simona Mangiante. Mangiante told The Atlantic last month that she first heard about Papadopoulos and his work for the Trump campaign after starting a job at the London Centre of International Law Practice, where Mifsud was the "Director for International Strategic Development," in September 2016. Mifsud and his associate Nagi Idris told Mangiante over lunch that Papadopoulos, who worked at the London Centre briefly in the spring of 2016, would be visiting London soon, and that if Mangiante met him, she should "make sure" she said she liked Trump--or not discuss politics at all. Mangiante insists, however, that Mifsud never directly introduced her to Papadopoulos, who she says she met on LinkedIn later that fall.

Mifsud may only be one part of the story of Papadopoulos's connections to Russian nationals in 2016. According to the letter sent to Schiff last week, Papadopoulos revealed in late 2016 that "Greek Orthodox leaders" and their Russian counterparts were "playing an important role" in Papadopoulos's collaboration with the Russians.

Papadopoulos's contact with Greek officials in 2016 have been of some interest to those investigating a potential conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia. In a September interview with CNN, Papadopoulos acknowledged for the first time that he told Greece's foreign minister about the Russian "dirt" on Clinton in May 2016 while visiting the country on a trip authorized by the Trump campaign. Russian President Vladimir Putin was set to visit Greece the very next day, and the foreign minister "explained to me that where you are sitting right now, tomorrow Putin will be sitting there," Papadopoulos told CNN, claiming that his disclosure about the "dirt" was "a nervous reaction" that he just "blurted out."

Throughout 2016, Papadopoulos made multiple trips to Greece and developed a working relationship with influential Greek officials while he was serving as a foreign policy advisor on the Trump campaign. In addition to the foreign minister Nikos Kotzias, Papadopoulos had meetings with the former President of Greece Prokopis Pavlopoulos and Ieronymos II, the Archbishop of Athens and All Greece. Papadopoulos's closest association with the Greek government, however, appears to have been with Greek Defense Minister Panos Kammenos, an outspoken supporter of Moscow with whom Papadopoulos met several times in 2016 and early 2017, including at Trump's inauguration. In his congratulatory tweet celebrating Trump's election victory, Kammenos noted Papadopoulos's importance in maintaining U.S.-Greek relations. A NATO military intelligence official told BuzzFeed News earlier this year that the Greek Ministry of Defense "is considered compromised by Russian intelligence."

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