Newly released FBI documents show the bureau opened a secret counterintelligence investigation into President Donald Trump just one day after he fired Director James Comey in May 2017, a probe now drawing fresh scrutiny over the bureau's conduct.
The White House released the declassified memos this week, pulling back the curtain on an FBI operation codenamed "Oxferd Comma" that treated the sitting president of the United States as a potential agent of a foreign government. The memos, dated May 16, 2017, laid out the bureau's stated purpose in stark terms: determine whether Trump 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."
That language, drawn directly from the FBI's own paperwork, captures how far the bureau was willing to go. One day after a president exercised his lawful authority to dismiss an FBI director, the agency opened a file treating him as a possible enemy operative. The investigation also aimed to determine whether Trump "and others yet to be named obstructed and/or conspiracy to obstruct any associated FBI investigation," Fox News Digital reported.
The "Oxferd Comma" memos were not closed until April 9, 2019, nearly two years later. By then, Special Counsel Robert Mueller had already completed his own investigation and found that members of the Trump campaign had not conspired or coordinated with the Russian government.
The timeline matters. Trump fired Comey in May 2017. The administration cited Comey's handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation as the reason. Comey, appointed FBI director by President Barack Obama in 2013, had overseen the probe into Clinton's use of private email servers and had sent a letter to Congress days before the 2016 election stating the FBI had discovered emails that "appear to be pertinent."
That letter rattled Democrats, who blamed Comey for damaging Clinton's candidacy. But when Trump removed him, the political establishment reversed course and cast the firing as obstruction. Within a day, the FBI had opened "Oxferd Comma." Roughly a week later, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Mueller as special counsel to take over and broaden the existing FBI investigation known as "Crossfire Hurricane."
The speed of that sequence, firing on one day, counterintelligence probe the next, special counsel within the week, raises a question the declassified documents now force into the open: was the FBI acting on evidence, or on institutional grievance?
John Durham's review, concluded in 2023, offered a damning answer. Durham found that the bureau lacked sufficient factual basis to open the full Crossfire Hurricane investigation in the first place and exhibited bias by departing from its usual standards. The pattern of FBI misconduct in the Russia probe has since become a matter of public record, with current FBI Director Kash Patel accusing the bureau of lying to obtain surveillance warrants targeting Trump's 2016 campaign.
The roots of the FBI's Trump-Russia investigation stretch back to July 2016, when the bureau launched "Crossfire Hurricane" after receiving information that Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos had suggested Russia possessed damaging information about Hillary Clinton. That tip became the predicate for one of the most consequential, and most criticized, federal investigations in modern American history.
Mueller's final report, released in April 2019, found that the Russian government had sought to influence the 2016 election through a social media disinformation campaign and by hacking and releasing Democratic Party emails. But on the central question, whether the Trump campaign had conspired with Moscow, Mueller's team came up empty. The report stated the investigation "did not establish" coordination or conspiracy.
That conclusion should have settled the matter. Instead, the political apparatus built around the Russia narrative kept running for years. And the declassified memos now show the FBI had opened yet another investigative track, "Oxferd Comma", with the president himself as the target, operating in parallel with the special counsel's work.
Even the codename raises eyebrows. Fox News Digital noted that it is unclear why the word "Oxford" was seemingly misspelled in the operation's title. No explanation has been offered.
Alongside the FBI memos, the White House also released new documents from a declassified annex to Durham's final report. These documents shed light on what officials described as the Clinton campaign's plan to smear then-candidate Trump by connecting him to Russia, a strategy that, according to the annex, was discussed openly among Clinton allies.
One passage from the annex states that "raising the theme of 'Putin's support for Trump' to the level of the Olympics scandal would divert the constituents' attention from the investigation of Clinton's compromised electronic correspondence." In plain English: push the Russia-Trump story hard enough, and voters might stop paying attention to Clinton's email problems.
A 2016 letter from Leonard Benardo, who worked for the Soros-founded philanthropic network Open Society Foundations and had business ties in Moscow dating to the 1980s, added another layer. Benardo wrote:
"Julie says it will be a long-term affair to demonize Putin and Trump. Now it is good for a post-convention bounce. Later the FBI will put more oil into the fire."
The "Julie" referenced in Benardo's letter appears to be Clinton foreign policy advisor Julianne Smith, according to the report appendix. That identification has not been independently confirmed, the appendix describes it as an apparent match, not a definitive one.
But the letter's language is striking on its own terms. A figure connected to a major progressive philanthropic network described a deliberate, long-term effort to link Trump to Putin, and predicted the FBI would intensify the effort. Whether Benardo had inside knowledge or was simply speculating, the FBI did exactly what he anticipated.
The legal consequences for Comey himself have continued to unfold separately, with criminal charges against the former director now working through the courts.
Consider the full arc. The FBI opened Crossfire Hurricane in July 2016 on the strength of a tip about a campaign adviser. It opened "Oxferd Comma" in May 2017, treating the president as a possible Russian asset. Mueller spent nearly two years and found no conspiracy. Durham spent years more and concluded the FBI never had sufficient basis to open the full investigation and had departed from its own standards.
Attorney General William Barr appointed Durham specifically to review how the FBI had initiated the Russia investigation. Durham's 2023 conclusion, that the bureau exhibited bias and lacked adequate factual grounding, stands as the most authoritative assessment of the FBI's conduct during this period.
The declassified memos now add documentary proof of what critics had long argued: the FBI moved against a sitting president with extraordinary speed and on thin grounds. The "Oxferd Comma" investigation opened one day after Comey's firing. It ran for nearly two years. And it produced nothing that Mueller's own investigation did not already cover, and that Mueller's team could not substantiate.
Meanwhile, Comey's own trial has been pushed to October, extending the legal reckoning for the man who oversaw the launch of the investigation that started it all.
The handling of classified material by senior officials during this era has drawn broader scrutiny as well. Former National Security Advisor John Bolton recently pleaded guilty to retaining classified material, a case that underscores the seriousness with which such matters are now being treated across the political spectrum.
Several questions remain. The full contents of the declassified FBI memos and the Durham annex have not been published in their entirety. Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for additional comment but did not report receiving a response.
The identity of "Julie" in the Benardo letter rests on an inference in the report appendix, not a confirmed identification. And the officials who raised concerns about the Clinton campaign's Russia strategy are not named in the available material.
Trump has called Comey a "dirty cop" and a "crooked man." Those are the president's words, not a legal finding. But the declassified record now available paints a picture of an FBI that moved against a president with remarkable speed, on a theory that two separate investigations failed to prove, after a firing the president had every constitutional right to carry out.
When a law enforcement agency opens a counterintelligence file on the commander-in-chief within twenty-four hours of a personnel decision, and comes up empty after years of digging, the public deserves to know exactly how that happened and who authorized it. These memos are a start. They should not be the end.
