Newly revealed FBI documents show the bureau investigated President Donald Trump in May 2017 to determine if he was acting as a Russian agent following his dismissal of FBI Director James Comey. The probe, reportedly codenamed "Oxferd Comma," was a subsection of the larger Crossfire Hurricane investigation examining potential collusion between Trump's 2016 campaign and the Russian government.
Sources indicate that some FBI officials harbored suspicions that Trump fired Comey potentially at the behest of Russia, which they viewed as an obstruction of justice. This concern ultimately led to the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller to investigate the matter further.
Trump had stated that his decision to fire Comey in May 2017 was due to Comey's handling of the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's email scandal. However, the newly surfaced documents suggest a differing internal perspective within the FBI.
Journalist John Solomon, who joined the White House's Government Transparency Task Force, released a report on the FBI probe on Wednesday. Solomon's report notes that previously released FBI and DOJ records indicated that the notion of Trump being a Russian asset had already been largely dismissed by agents and analysts working on the Crossfire Hurricane case prior to the Oxferd Comma probe.
The Oxferd Comma probe was reportedly marked as sensitive, a designation that could have obscured its existence from other agents. It was eventually incorporated into the broader Mueller investigation. Upon the conclusion of the Mueller investigation, which did not implicate Trump in collusion with Russia, an official told CBS News that the Oxferd Comma probe lacked merit and that the FBI's possession of information at that time had largely debunked or ruled out collusion between Trump or his campaign and Russia.
Trump has consistently characterized the investigations into his campaign and Russia as a hoax and a witch hunt.