Newly declassified FBI records made public Wednesday reveal that the bureau opened a secret investigation examining whether President Donald Trump was operating in Russia’s interest when he dismissed FBI Director James Comey in 2017, a theory an administration official said was never supported by any evidence. The probe, code-named “Oxferd Comma,” has resurfaced as a fresh flashpoint in the long-running battle over the origins of the Trump-Russia investigations.

The material was released by the White House Government Transparency Task Force after Trump and White House counsel David Warrington declassified it. The documents show that Oxferd Comma was launched as part of Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI’s wider investigation into possible coordination between Trump’s 2016 campaign and the Russian government. The case was later absorbed into Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation and closed on April 9, 2019, with no charges against the president.

How the Investigation Began

In May 2017, Trump dismissed Comey only a few months after taking office. The White House initially cited Comey’s handling of the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails as the reason for the dismissal. Mueller’s report later asserted that Trump was frustrated with Comey for declining to publicly state that Trump himself was not under investigation regarding possible Russian connections.

According to a May 16, 2017, bureau memo, investigators sought to determine whether Trump was “directed by, controlled by, and/or coordinated activities with, the Russian Federation” in a way that threatened national security or violated federal law. One declassified memo justified the decision, stating that opening the case was "the least intrusive method" to address the alleged national security risk.

The dismissal triggered the broader investigation. Then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein — who had written a memo criticizing Comey’s handling of the Clinton email matter before the firing — appointed Mueller as special counsel to examine claims of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Mueller ultimately found no evidence that Trump campaign members “conspired or coordinated” with Russia, though he described some contacts between the campaign and individuals linked to the Russian government.

An Administration Official Disputes the Predicate

The case was marked sensitive, a designation generally used to keep an investigation off the books from other agents, according to an administration official. That official said the theory underpinning the probe collapsed under scrutiny once Oxferd Comma was folded into Mueller’s work.

The official expressed surprise that the obstruction theory suggested Trump was working for Russian President Vladimir Putin. The official said nearly all the evidence the bureau had at that time "debunked or ruled out" collusion between Trump or his campaign and Russia. John Solomon, founder and editor-in-chief of Just the News who works on a Trump administration task force examining election integrity, briefed the public Wednesday morning on the records and previewed the release in an article he authored on the White House’s webpage.

Solomon argued that agents already possessed significant contradicting information. By that point, he said, investigators had identified issues with the Steele dossier, determined that former national security adviser Michael Flynn was not involved in collusion, and learned that former campaign adviser Carter Page had worked as a CIA operational contact.

The Code Name Sparks Suspicion

The unusual spelling of the code name has itself become a subject of dispute. Former acting Assistant Attorney General Jeff Clark, now vice president of litigation at the Oversight Project, alleged the name was deliberately altered to make records harder to locate. He said he consulted a document expert who concluded the first “o” in “Comma” was actually a zero, further obscuring the probe’s name.

Clark suggested that searching for records under the proper spelling via Freedom of Information Act requests could have yielded no results, allowing the FBI to claim no such documents existed. He described the alleged maneuver as an act of revenge, telling Fox News Digital that the FBI under Comey and FBI Director Christopher Wray was "hopelessly corrupt." Comey, for his part, has long maintained he favors the punctuation mark, once responding that his book cover proves as much. His memoir is titled “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership.”

An FBI spokesperson defended the release, noting that Director Kash Patel was the lead investigator who originally exposed the Crossfire Hurricane matter and has since released more than 40,000 pages of documents to the public.

The revelations arrive amid escalating legal friction between Trump and his former FBI chief. Earlier this year, Comey was charged with threatening the president’s life by posting photos of seashells arranged to spell the numbers “’86 47.”

Comey has claimed he is being targeted through vindictive and selective prosecution, a charge the Justice Department has denied. He was also separately charged last year with making false statements to Congress, though that indictment was dismissed.

Trump has repeatedly attacked the FBI and intelligence agencies over what he calls unethical investigations into his campaigns and presidency, and has vowed to pursue probes of his own. He has branded Comey a “dirty cop,” while Comey has called the president “morally unfit” for office. Documents notes attributed to former agents underscored the internal doubts: FBI agent William Barnett said he found no evidence of coordination and considered the investigation pointless, while agent Peter Strzok reportedly described the effort as “no big there there.”