The FBI quietly launched a counterintelligence investigation into whether President Trump was wittingly or unwittingly serving as a Russian agent when he dismissed then-Director James Comey in 2017, newly released White House documents reveal.
The operation, code-named Oxferd Comma, was an offshoot of Crossfire Hurricane, the politically explosive inquiry into alleged collusion between Trumps 2016 campaign and the Kremlin. According to the New York Post, the documents show that the bureau escalated its efforts immediately after Comeys ouster, despite the absence of any proven criminal conspiracy.
At the time, the Trump administration publicly justified Comeys firing by pointing to his mishandling of the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clintons private email server. It later emerged, however, that the president was angered by Comeys refusal to state publicly that Trump was not a target of Crossfire Hurricane, a refusal that helped fuel a media narrative of suspicion around the new administration.
The May 16, 2017 memorandum authorizing Oxferd Comma was signed off by then-FBI General Counsel James A. Baker and Bill Priestap, the assistant director of the bureaus counterintelligence division. The memo said the probe was intended to determine if President Trump is or was directed by, controlled by, and/or coordinated activities with, the Russian Federation in a manner constituting a threat to the national security of the United States and/or a violation of federal criminal statutes.
In addition, this investigation will also seek to determine whether President Trump and others yet to be named obstructed and/or conspiracy to obstruct any associated FBI investigation. That language underscored how quickly a policy dispute over Comeys tenure was transformed into a sweeping inquiry into the sitting presidents motives and loyalties.
At the time Oxferd Comma was opened, President Trump was not personally under investigation for collusion with Russia during the 2016 race. His decision to remove Comey, however, was seized upon as potential obstruction of justice and used to justify the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller, himself a former FBI director.
Oxferd Comma was formally closed on April 9, 2019, without any charges against President Trump. The Mueller investigation likewise found no evidence that Trump or his aides coordinated with Russia in 2016, though it noted that the campaign had some contacts with individuals linked to Moscow.
For conservatives, the episode reinforces long-standing concerns about an unelected security bureaucracy willing to treat a sitting president as a national security suspect on the thinnest of grounds. Trump has repeatedly blasted Crossfire Hurricane and the Mueller probe as a witch hunt, accusing the FBI of targeting him and frequently branding Comey a dirty cop, a charge that resonates with those who see these investigations as emblematic of a broader weaponization of federal power against political outsiders.
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