White House declassifies 2017 FBI probe into Trump and Russia ties

The White House released declassified memos on Aug. 5 that describe a secret FBI counterintelligence inquiry opened in May 2017 after Donald Trump fired James Comey. The documents say agents were examining whether Trump was acting as a Russian asset, or whether Russia had any role in Comey’s dismissal, and they identify the inquiry by the internal name “Oxferd Comma.”

The newly released material adds a document trail to an investigation that had been little noted outside the larger Russia saga. One of the memos, dated May 16, 2017, cites the FBI’s earlier Crossfire Hurricane investigation into Russian election meddling, tying the new inquiry to the bureau’s existing counterintelligence work rather than presenting it as a separate political episode. The records show that the probe was later absorbed into the broader Crossfire Hurricane and Mueller investigations, narrowing the value of the standalone inquiry as an independent case file.

That broader backdrop matters because the Russia investigation was already one of the most heavily documented in recent federal history. Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation concluded in 2019 and produced the Mueller report that same year, while the FBI’s work on Russian influence did not end with Mueller’s criminal probe. NBC News reported in 2019 that the bureau’s efforts to assess and counter Russian influence continued after the special counsel’s investigation closed, underscoring that the counterintelligence side of the effort outlasted the criminal case.

The new release also fits a wider Trump administration push in 2026 to declassify records connected to Russia and election-interference inquiries. The documents do not settle the political arguments around Trump and Russia, but they do show that the FBI was looking at those questions inside a formal counterintelligence process in the weeks after Comey was fired. They also make clear that the inquiry was not isolated from the bureau’s earlier election-meddling work, and that it was eventually folded into the larger investigations that defined the public record on Russia and the 2016 election.