The FBI Investigated Trump as a Russian Asset for Firing Comey. Its Own Agents Had Already Ruled It Out.
On August 5, 2026, the White House Government Transparency Task Force declassified an FBI file that had sat sealed for nine years: “Oxferd Comma,” a full counterintelligence investigation opened exactly one week after President Trump fired FBI Director James Comey in May 2017. Its stated purpose was to determine whether the newly elected president was, in the FBI’s own words, “wittingly or unwittingly” acting on behalf of the Russian Federation when he fired his own FBI director.
The documents, first reported by RealClearInvestigations’ Aaron Maté, show the bureau opened that file after its own case agents had already concluded there was no evidence of Russian collusion to find. One lead agent wanted off the case. A senior counterintelligence official texted that there was “no big there there.” The Steele dossier allegations underlying the broader Russia probe had already been marked “disproven” or uncorroborable in an internal FBI spreadsheet months earlier.
No asset charge was ever filed. No obstruction charge was ever filed. The file closed in April 2019 without a finding against the president, folded quietly into Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s larger probe. It stayed classified until this week.
- 7 days from Comey's May 9, 2017 firing to the FBI opening “Oxferd Comma” on May 16, 2017 — White House Government Transparency Task Force declassification, Aug. 5, 2026
- 17 significant errors found in the four FISA applications used to surveil Trump campaign adviser Carter Page — DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, Dec. 9, 2019
- 0 charges of acting as a Russian asset or obstructing the FBI were ever filed against Trump before the file closed — FBI closing communication / Mueller Report, March 2019
- 9 years the Oxferd Comma file stayed classified before this week's release — White House Government Transparency Task Force
The release came from the White House Government Transparency Task Force, chaired by journalist John Solomon, who briefed reporters the morning of August 5. The centerpiece is an FBI “Opening Electronic Communication” dated May 16, 2017, formally launching a full investigation under the code name “Oxferd Comma” — the misspelling is the bureau’s own, preserved in the declassified original. Its language is direct: the FBI was “opening a full investigation based on the articulable factual basis that reasonably indicates that President Donald J. Trump may be or has been, wittingly or unwittingly, involved in activities for or on behalf of the Government of the Russian Federation which may constitute violations of federal criminal law or threats to the national security of the United States.”
Oxferd Comma was not Crossfire Hurricane itself — the FBI’s original 2016 counterintelligence probe into the Trump campaign. It was a new, separate file, opened after Trump was already sitting in the Oval Office, treating the president’s decision to fire his own FBI director as possible evidence he was directed by a foreign adversary. The memo also authorized investigators to examine whether Trump “obstructed and/or conspired to obstruct” the FBI’s ongoing Russia investigation.
BIG ANNOUNCEMENT: This morning, the White House Government Transparency Task Force released newly declassified documents exposing an FBI criminal investigation code-named Oxferd Comma. The documents can be downloaded here.
The paper trail behind Oxferd Comma runs eight days, start to finish. On May 9, 2017, Rod Rosenstein, the Deputy Attorney General, signed the memo recommending Comey’s termination — a memo focused entirely on Comey’s handling of the Clinton email investigation the previous year, with no mention of Russia. Trump fired Comey that same day. One week later, on May 16, FBI General Counsel James Baker and Assistant Director for Counterintelligence William Priestap approved the new full investigation into whether that firing was itself a Russia-linked act, and Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe ordered it opened, with Rosenstein informed.
The following morning, May 17, Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller as Special Counsel — one day after Oxferd Comma opened, and the same official who had written the rationale for Comey’s firing now handed the resulting Russia-asset theory to an outside prosecutor. Two days after that, on May 19, senior counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok texted FBI lawyer Lisa Page his private read on the case his own bureau had just opened: “I hesitate in part because of my gut sense and concern there’s no big there there.”
The declassified record shows Oxferd Comma was opened after the FBI had already amassed reasons to doubt the underlying collusion theory. An internal FBI spreadsheet from February 2017 — three months before Comey was fired — had already marked individual Steele dossier allegations as “disproven,” “internet rumor,” or unable to be corroborated. One of Christopher Steele’s own subsources had separately dismissed the material to the FBI as “bar talk, hearsay.” Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn had already been cleared of coordinating with Russia.
William Barnett, one of the lead case agents on the broader Russia investigation, had concluded he had seen no evidence of coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia and asked to be taken off the case, later comparing the investigation to “a bad game of Clue.” None of that stopped Baker and Priestap from approving a new file built on the theory that the president himself was now a Russian asset.
“I hesitate in part because of my gut sense and concern there's no big there there.”
Peter Strzok, FBI counterintelligence agent, text to Lisa Page, May 19, 2017
Oxferd Comma is not the first documented failure in how the FBI built its Trump-Russia case. DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz reported in December 2019 that the four FISA applications used to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page contained 17 significant errors and omissions, including factual assertions the FBI could not support with the documentation its own policy required. Special Counsel John Durham’s final report, released in May 2023, went further upstream: it found the FBI lacked a sufficient factual basis to open Crossfire Hurricane as a full investigation in the first place, relying instead on “raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence” and never independently verifying the Steele dossier before using it to justify surveillance.
Durham also found the FBI had been alerted to — and did not pursue — intelligence describing a Clinton campaign plan to tie Trump to Russia as a distraction from her own email controversy. Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) declassified a fuller appendix on that Clinton-plan intelligence and the FBI’s failure to investigate it. Taken together with Oxferd Comma, the pattern across nine years of document releases is the same: FBI leadership repeatedly advanced a Russia-asset theory that the bureau’s own case agents, working the actual evidence, did not believe.
The FBI opens “Crossfire Hurricane,” its counterintelligence probe into the Trump campaign and Russia, based on a foreign diplomat's secondhand account of a conversation with campaign aide George Papadopoulos.
President Trump fires FBI Director James Comey. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein's memo recommending the firing cites Comey's handling of the Clinton email investigation and does not mention Russia.
FBI General Counsel James Baker and Assistant Director William Priestap approve a new full investigation — code-named “Oxferd Comma” — into whether Trump fired Comey while acting for Russia. Acting Director Andrew McCabe orders it opened.
Rosenstein appoints Robert Mueller as Special Counsel, one day after Oxferd Comma opens, folding the new file into the broader Russia probe.
The Oxferd Comma file is formally closed a month after Mueller's report finds no criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia. No asset or obstruction charge was ever filed.
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz reports 17 significant errors and omissions across the four FISA applications used to surveil Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
Special Counsel John Durham's final report concludes the FBI lacked sufficient basis to open Crossfire Hurricane as a full investigation and relied on “raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence.”
The White House Government Transparency Task Force declassifies the Oxferd Comma file in full, nine years after it was opened.
It's always worse than we thought.
Oxferd Comma formally closed on April 9, 2019, a month after Mueller’s report found no criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. It sat classified for the rest of the Trump and Biden administrations. The current release traces back to a March 2025 memorandum in which Trump directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to declassify the Crossfire Hurricane files, redacting only material protected by FISA court orders or personal identifying information. FBI Director Kash Patel turned roughly 700 pages over to House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) that year, and later said publicly that he had found a room of previously undisclosed Crossfire Hurricane documents and hard drives inside FBI headquarters — a room that was not marked on the building’s own blueprints.
Reacting to the broader run of declassifications this year, Jordan put it plainly: “Whenever we do these investigations, the only thing we get wrong is that it’s always worse than we thought.” Trump has characterized the underlying Russia investigation the same way for nearly a decade. In a July 6, 2026 Truth Social post — posted a month before Oxferd Comma’s declassification, reflecting his consistent framing of the broader case rather than same-day reaction — he wrote simply: “It was the Greatest Hoax in Political History!”
It was the Greatest Hoax in Political History!
Posted five weeks before the Oxferd Comma declassification, as part of Trump's long-running characterization of the Russia investigation — not a same-day reaction to this release.
The declassified Oxferd Comma file shows the FBI opened a criminal investigation into whether a sitting president was a Russian asset one week after he fired his own FBI director — built on a theory that the bureau’s own case agents had already concluded the evidence did not support. It joins two prior federal findings, from Inspector General Horowitz and Special Counsel Durham, describing the same pattern from different angles. No charge was ever filed. The file was simply closed, then sealed, for nine years.
