You fucking idiot, of course he said it in jest. The server was already in the FBI's possession. How the hell could the "Russians" find the emails.
What a tool.
So tell me something, why was Trump campaign PAYING an OPERATIVE to obtain 'emails' if they didn't they think they existed and it was all in jest?
"In May 2017 Smith told the Wall Street Journal that he had been actively involved, during the 2016 presidential election campaign, in trying to obtain emails he believed had been deleted from Hillary Clinton's computer server.[10][11] In that quest he contacted several known hacker groups, including some Russian groups.[12] He claimed he was working on behalf of Trump campaign advisor Mike Flynn
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_W._Smith
https://lawfareblog.com/time-i-got-recruited-collude-russians