On August 5, 2026, the White House declassified and released FBI memos from 2017 showing that, after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey in May of that year, the bureau opened a counterintelligence investigation, a subcomponent of the broader Crossfire Hurricane probe codenamed “Oxferd Comma” (an unexplained misspelling), into whether the president himself was acting on behalf of Russia. The May 16, 2017 memo opening the case said its goal was “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,” and whether Trump and others obstructed any related FBI investigation.
The inquiry was folded into Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, and the memos show it was closed on April 9, 2019, weeks after Mueller's report, without charges against Trump. The administration framed the release as proof the theory was baseless. An official told CBS News the investigation “was later found not to have any merit,” and that by then “almost everything in the FBI's possession at that point had debunked or ruled out that Trump or his campaign was colluding with Russia.” The White House's own account of the memos was written by John Solomon, the chairman of its Government Transparency Task Force, who is on leave as editor in chief of Just the News.
The declassification is the newsworthy act here, not a newly discovered probe: it was already known that the FBI investigated Comey's firing as possible obstruction, and the memos add that it predicated the case on the possibility that Trump was a Russian asset. The White House said the release came as federal prosecutors in Fort Pierce, Florida, reportedly investigate whether the FBI, Justice Department and intelligence agencies conspired to violate the civil rights of Trump and his followers, about three months before the midterm elections. The “no merit” characterization is the administration's; the memos themselves show that the question was asked and later closed without charges (see Comey Is Indicted a Second Time, Now for an Instagram Photo of Seashells Spelling '86 47').
Correction (October 2, 2026): This entry said the memos were released weeks before the midterms; August 5 was about three months before the November election. The entry now also notes that the White House's account of the memos was written by the chairman of its Government Transparency Task Force.