Declassified FBI Docs: Trump Probed as Russian Asset for Firing Comey
Left says
- •The Comey firing came just one day after Comey briefed lawmakers on the Russia probe, and Trump himself told NBC's Lester Holt he was thinking of 'this Russia thing' when he decided to fire him, giving investigators a legitimate factual basis to examine obstruction concerns.
- •Opening a counterintelligence inquiry after a president abruptly fires the official leading an investigation into his own campaign's foreign contacts is standard protective procedure, not a partisan witch hunt.
- •The Mueller investigation that grew out of this period documented extensive contacts between Trump associates and Russian nationals, even though it did not establish a criminal conspiracy.
- •Releasing selectively declassified fragments decades later, framed by the White House itself, raises concerns about using intelligence files as political ammunition rather than for transparency.
Right says
- •FBI officials opened a probe into whether the sitting president was a Russian asset based on his lawful exercise of presidential authority to fire an FBI director, despite internal acknowledgment that there was 'no big there there.'
- •The investigation, code-named with deliberately misspelled terms like 'Oxferd Comma,' appears designed to frustrate future FOIA requests, suggesting officials knew their conduct wouldn't survive public scrutiny.
- •The underlying Crossfire Hurricane case was built on the Steele dossier, which was funded by the Clinton campaign and later found by Special Counsel John Durham to rest on uncorroborated, unverified intelligence.
- •FBI leadership under Kash Patel has released tens of thousands of pages exposing this conduct and says anyone found to have acted unethically will be held accountable.
Common Take
High Consensus- The FBI opened a formal counterintelligence investigation into whether Trump's firing of Comey was connected to Russia, beginning around May 16, 2017.
- Internal FBI communications at the time, including from Peter Strzok, expressed doubt about the strength of the underlying allegations.
- The Steele dossier, funded through the Clinton campaign's law firm, played a role in the origins of the broader Crossfire Hurricane investigation.
- The investigation continued for nearly two years, until April 2019, and its existence was not previously public in this level of detail.
The Arguments
Left argues
Opening a counterintelligence inquiry after a president abruptly fires the official leading an investigation into his own campaign's foreign contacts is a legitimate protective step, especially since Trump himself told Lester Holt he was thinking of 'this Russia thing' when he fired Comey.
Right counters
The FBI's own internal assessments at the time, including Peter Strzok's admission there was 'no big there there,' show agents knew the asset theory was baseless even as they opened a full investigation into a sitting president's loyalty, which is a much larger step than mere caution warrants.
Right argues
The Steele dossier underlying Crossfire Hurricane was funded by the Clinton campaign and later found by Special Counsel Durham to rest on raw, uncorroborated intelligence, meaning the entire probe—including the 'Oxferd Comma' offshoot—was built on a rotten foundation from the start.
Left counters
The Oxferd Comma investigation was opened based on Trump's own statements to Lester Holt and lawmakers' briefings, not solely the dossier, and Mueller's investigation independently documented extensive Trump-associate contacts with Russians regardless of the dossier's flaws.
Right argues
The use of deliberately misspelled code names like 'Oxferd Comma' and character substitutions suggests officials anticipated scrutiny and took active steps to frustrate future FOIA requests, which is itself evidence they knew their conduct was improper.
Left counters
Unusual code names are common bureaucratic practice across many FBI investigations and don't by themselves prove an intent to evade FOIA; treating a naming quirk as proof of a cover-up is a leap not substantiated by direct evidence of intent.
Left argues
The timing and selective framing of this 2026 declassification—released by the White House itself years after the fact—raises legitimate concerns that intelligence files are being weaponized for political messaging rather than genuine transparency.
Right counters
Transparency about government overreach is valuable regardless of who releases it or when, and FBI leadership under Kash Patel has released tens of thousands of pages and pledged accountability, which is a substantive commitment to disclosure, not just political theater.
Left argues
Mueller's investigation, which grew directly out of this period, documented extensive and substantive contacts between Trump associates and Russian nationals, providing a legitimate factual basis for concern even though no criminal conspiracy was ultimately proven.
Right counters
Documented contacts are not evidence of the president himself acting as a Russian asset, and conflating the two retroactively justifies an investigation that agents at the time already believed lacked substance.
Challenge Questions
These questions target genuine internal contradictions — meant to provoke honest reflection.
Right asks Left
“If FBI agents privately acknowledged there was 'no big there there' regarding Trump acting as a Russian asset, how can opening a formal counterintelligence probe into the president on that theory be defended as proportionate rather than pretextual?”
Left asks Right
“If the goal of releasing these documents is genuine transparency and accountability, why does the criticism focus so heavily on code-name misspellings and alleged FOIA-evasion rather than on whether the underlying decision to investigate contacts with a foreign adversary was reasonable given what was known at the time?”
Outlier Report
Left Fringe
Figures like Rachel Maddow and some MSNBC commentators historically insisted on a maximalist collusion narrative treating any Trump-Russia contact as near-proof of conspiracy; this represents maybe 15-20% of the left, as most Democrats and liberal commentators have since moderated to a more nuanced 'obstruction concerns were legitimate, but full collusion wasn't proven' stance.
Right Fringe
Figures like Jeff Clark and Mike Howell of the Oversight Project push a maximalist 'deep state conspiracy' framing treating misspellings as proof of criminal obstruction; this represents roughly 20-25% of the right, with the broader conservative base agreeing the investigation was politically motivated but not all embracing the more elaborate FOIA-sabotage theories.
Noise Assessment
High noise ratio — this story is heavily driven by White House-orchestrated declassification releases and amplified by ideological media on both sides; actual public engagement with granular details like 'Oxferd Comma' spelling is minimal, with most Americans holding pre-existing, largely partisan priors about Russiagate rather than updating based on this specific document release.
Sources (7)
The latest declassified documents relating to the FBI's politically motivated investigations into President Donald Trump revealed that the Bureau secretly investigated Trump for alleged ties to Russia over his firing of then-FBI Director James Comey. As Just the News' John Solomon reported Wednesday, the electronic communication opening the probe was sent on May 16, 2017 – a mere week after Trump fired Comey. The FBI knew that the firing had nothing to do with Russia, yet investigated the sitting president anyway.
<img src="https://www.theblaze.com/media-library/deep-staters-at-fbi-framed-trump-firing-comey-as-a-russian-op-then-apparently-worked-to-cover-their-tracks.jpg?id=67580490&width=1245&height=700&coordinates=0%2C8%2C0%2C47" /><br /><br /><p>More revelations about the Crossfire Hurricane investigation appear to show just how far the deep state was willing to go to frame Donald Trump as a Russian asset.</p><p>The FBI <a href="https://www.grassley.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/CFH%20Timeline%20w%20Updates%2020201203%20(FINAL).pdf" target="_blank">officially opened</a> the Crossfire Hurricane investigation into supposed Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election on July 31 of that year.</p><p class="pull-quote">'They knew what they were doing was wrong.'</p><p>The operation was a partisan <a href="https://www.theblaze.com/news/trumps-cia-director-has-bad-news-for-hillary-clinton-regarding-alleged-treasonous-conspiracy">frame</a> from start to finish — launched on the basis of what federal prosecutor John Durham <a href="https://www.justice.gov/archives/sco-durham/media/1381211/dl" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">found</a> to have been "raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence" at a time when "neither U.S. law enforcement nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings."</p><p><a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/releases/2026/08/fbi-secretly-opened-probe-alleging-trump-fired-comey-because-he-was-a-russian-asset-declassified-memos-show/" target="_blank">Declassified FBI documents</a> released by the White House on Wednesday show that an investigative subcomponent of Crossfire Hurricane code-named "Oxferd Comma" involved floating the baseless notion that President Donald Trump was acting on the behalf of the Kremlin when he fired then-FBI Director James Comey in May 2017.</p><p>The FBI appears to have strategically incorporated misspellings like "Oxferd" and numerical substitutions for letters in order to counter Freedom of Information Act requests.</p><p>Trump <a href="https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/memorandum-for-the-attorney-general-from-rod-j-rosenstein-recommending-the-termination-fbi" target="_blank">fired</a> Comey for his handling of the investigation into twice-failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server for official public communications and Comey's perceived usurpation of the attorney general's authority on July 5, 2016, when he announced that the case would be closed without prosecution.</p><h2>Another deep-state smear job</h2><p>Among the newly declassified documents is a partially redacted <a href="https://roar-assets-auto.rbl.ms/files/111130/OXFERD_COMMA_-_Opening_EC_-_redacted_and_declassified_by_FBI_7.30.26%5B1%5D.pdf?rand=1786022028570" target="_blank">internal memo</a> that shows that a week after Trump fired Comey, Bill Priestap, then-assistant director of the FBI's Counterintelligence Division, directed the bureau to launch a full investigation "based on an 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."</p><p>The memo noted that the new investigation — marked as a "sensitive investigative matter" and built on the "predetermined criteria set forth by the CROSSFIRE HURRICANE investigative team" — would determine whether Trump and others obstructed or conspired to obstruct any associated FBI investigation and whether Comey's termination was itself an instance of obstruction.</p><p><strong>RELATED: </strong><strong><a href="https://www.theblaze.com/columns/opinion/trump-is-continuing-jfks-war-on-communist-subversion" target="_blank">Trump is continuing JFK’s war on communist subversion </a></strong></p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image image-crop-16x9"> <img alt="" class="rm-shortcode" id="3a362" src="https://www.theblaze.com/media-library/image.jpg?id=67581772&width=1245&height=700&quality=50&coordinates=0%2C13%2C0%2C94" /><small class="image-media media-photo-credit">Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images</small></p><p>The FBI memo quoted from an interview where Trump, discussing his decision to fire Comey, said, "This Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story, it's an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won."</p><p>According to the memo, this "can be reasonably read to imply that the FBI's counterintelligence investigation was a factor in President Trump's decision to terminate Comey."</p><p>The investigation, the launch of which former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe and then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein were made aware, continued until April 2019.</p><p>Now in August 2026, the White House is highlighting previously released documents showing that this operation was launched despite the notion of Trump being a Russian asset having "already been widely dismissed by agents and analysts working for months beforehand on the Crossfire Hurricane case."</p><p>For example, then-FBI Deputy Assistant Director <a href="https://www.theblaze.com/news/disgraced-russiagate-hoaxer-peter-strzok-gets-some-bad-news-regarding-his-federal-case" target="_blank">Peter Strzok</a> <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Strzok-Text-Messages.pdf" target="_blank">said</a> in a May 19, 2017, email to Lisa Page that his "gut sense" was that "there's no big there there."</p><p>The White House also pointed out that by the time the Oxferd Comma investigation was under way, the FBI "had also learned that the original allegations of collusion came from Hillary Clinton’s campaign, were funneled to the FBI in a dossier written by a former British spy named Christopher Steele, who was paid by Clinton campaign’s law firm, and that the Steele dossier’s contents had mostly been uncorroborated or debunked and were part of a political dirty trick."</p><p>FBI Assistant Director Ben Williamson said in a statement to Blaze News, "The weaponization that occurred against President Trump under prior regimes was inexcusable and wholly un-American. Director [Kash] Patel himself was the lead investigator who originally exposed the disgraceful Crossfire Hurricane scandal, and as director, he has released over 40,000 pages of documents to the public exposing similar malfeasance from former FBI leadership — a threefold increase from both his predecessors combined. As we’ve said repeatedly: Any individual who is found to have acted unethically or engaged in weaponization has been or will be fired from the Bureau and held accountable under the law.”</p><h2>Everything in the dark</h2><p>Jeff Clark, the vice president of litigation at the Oversight Project, <a href="https://x.com/JeffClarkUS/status/2084967541420511333?s=20" target="_blank">suggested</a> that "James Comey was well-known by his associates as liking Oxford commas, so they named the operation (clearly motivated by revenge in response to Trump firing Comey) as a hommage (Fr.) to their beloved Comey. But that doesn’t explain why it was deliberately misspelled as 'Oxferd.'"</p><p>"I’m going to go ahead and guess that they did that to deliberately frustrate future FOIA requests if anyone in the outside world happened to hear about what they thought was 'Operation Oxford Comma' and then go in search of the documents," continued Clark. Then the FBI could intake a FOIA request for that and say back truthfully 'Sorry, no responsive documents.'"</p><p>After poring over the documents, Clark <a href="https://x.com/JeffClarkUS/status/2085120275738132948?s=20" target="_blank">discovered</a> that in addition to misspelling "Oxford," the FBI "substituted in a zero ( 0 ) for an 'o' so that it’s not Comma, it’s C0mma."</p><p>"Totally designed to foil FOIA requests. It should be investigated as an obstruction of justice," said Clark. "You know, some real obstruction of an official proceeding. I consulted with a document expert. He measured the o-looking letter/digit in the document and concluded it was a zero."</p><p>Mike Howell, the president of the Oversight Project, told Blaze News, "They knew what they were doing was wrong. They knew that because it was wrong. Shame on them and those who cheered them on."</p><p class="pull-quote">'We are the cat. And the cat likes eating mice.'</p><p>When asked whether his government watchdog organization frequently encounters clearly intentional efforts to hide documents with misspellings, Howell answered in the affirmative and noted, "Keep in mind that in the FOIA obstruction by Fauci adviser [David] Morens, it was our FOIA being obstructed."</p><p>"As you know, I try to always communicate on gmail because my NIH email is FOIA’d constantly," Morens <a href="https://www.theblaze.com/news/top-fauci-advisor-at-nih-admitted-to-other-covid-investigators-that-he-used-personal-email-to-subvert-foia-laws" target="_blank">wrote</a> to the top scientists involved in figuring out where COVID-19 came from, including Peter Daszak, the disgraced head of the now-defunct EcoHealth Alliance, which directed U.S. funds into the Wuhan Institute of Virology.</p><p>"Stuff sent to my gmail gets to my phone," continued Morens, "but not my NIH computer."</p><p>Howell noted further that "bureaucrats, particularly at high levels, are acutely aware that sophisticated investigative operations will target them. It is a game of cat and mouse. We are the cat. And the cat likes eating mice."</p><p><em>Editor's note: Mike Howell is a contributor to Blaze News.</em></p><p><em>Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. </em><em><a href="https://www.theblaze.com/newsletters/theblaze-articlelink" target="_self">Sign up here</a></em><em>!</em></p>
<img alt="voting booths" class="webfeedsFeaturedVisual wp-post-image" src="https://thefederalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/3002212217_24b41ef85f_k-1200x675.jpg" style="display: block; margin: auto; margin-bottom: 5px;" />An official says the breach displays a major vulnerability in the 2020 election that Democrats insist was the most secure in history.