The day Michael Flynn pleaded guilty, the FBI already knew he'd done nothing wrong.
That same bureau had a second secret investigation running – one they never wanted declassified.
Now the memos are public, and the codename tells the whole story.
The Declassified Memos From Crossfire Hurricane They Hoped You'd Never See
On May 16, 2017 – one week after James Comey was fired – the FBI's counterintelligence division quietly opened a criminal investigation into the sitting President of the United States.
They called it "Oxferd Comma."
The formal opening document states the FBI was probing whether Trump "may be or has been, wittingly or unwittingly, involved in activities for or on behalf of the Government of the Russian Federation which may constitute violations of federal criminal law or threats to the national security of the United States."
The FBI was treating the man Americans just elected president as a possible Putin puppet based on bogus information.
The memo was approved by FBI General Counsel James Baker and Assistant Director for Counterintelligence William Priestap.
Both Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein were told the probe had launched. Within eight days, Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller as Special Counsel – and Oxferd Comma quietly folded into that operation, giving the witch hunt two more years of oxygen.
Peter Strzok Knew It Was a Lie Before the Ink Was Dry
At the exact moment the FBI was stamping "sensitive investigative matter" on the Oxferd Comma files, the bureau's own lead agent was texting his doubts in plain English.
On May 19, 2017 – three days after Oxferd Comma opened – Peter Strzok wrote FBI attorney Lisa Page: "I hesitate in part because of my gut sense and concern there's no big there there."
Strzok was the lead agent on Crossfire Hurricane, the broader Russia collusion investigation. He wasn't a skeptic – he was the man running it. And he already knew there was nothing.
FBI Special Agent William Barnett confirmed it. Barnett worked alongside Strzok and told Justice Department investigators that by early 2017 the bureau had largely ruled out that anyone in Trump's orbit – not Michael Flynn, not Carter Page, not George Papadopoulos – had colluded with Russia.
"BARNETT still did not see any evidence of collusion between the TRUMP Campaign and the Russian Government," the interview summary states.
The FBI opened Oxferd Comma anyway.
By January 2017, the bureau had also cleared Flynn entirely. "No derogatory information was reported back to the FBI," a closing memo stated.
Then agents invited Flynn in for an interview, caught him in an ambiguous statement, and charged him with lying. Priestap – the same counterintelligence chief who approved Oxferd Comma – wrote his own note questioning what they were doing: "What's our goal? Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?"
That is the FBI that investigated Donald Trump.
The Steele Dossier They Built Russiagate On Was Already Debunked
The foundation beneath all of it was the bogus Steele dossier – phony opposition research bankrolled by Clinton's campaign through a law firm, assembled by a former British intelligence officer whose primary source the FBI suspected of working for Moscow.
By early 2017, the bureau had evaluated every claim in the dossier – analysts built a spreadsheet to track it. Some entries were provably false. Most of the rest were internet rumors with nothing behind them.
The FBI also knew – from a CIA briefing delivered to then-Director Comey on August 3, 2016 – that U.S. intelligence had intercepted Hillary Clinton's plan to manufacture a Russia-Trump scandal.
CIA Director John Brennan personally briefed President Obama on the scheme as early as July 26, 2016. The FBI received that intelligence three days after Crossfire Hurricane launched.
They opened the Russia investigation knowing it was a Clinton dirty trick. Then they used the same debunked dossier to open Oxferd Comma – a second investigation they knew had no basis – and used it to justify appointing a Special Counsel who spent nearly two years nearly grinding the Trump presidency to a halt.
Special Counsel John Durham said in 2023: the FBI "failed to uphold their mission of strict fidelity to the law."
Fort Pierce Prosecutors Now Have the Names
The White House Government Transparency Task Force pulled the memos from classified storage and released them this week. Federal prosecutors in Fort Pierce, Florida, are now investigating whether the FBI, DOJ, and intelligence agencies engaged in an ongoing conspiracy to violate the civil rights of Trump and his supporters through a series of bad-faith criminal investigations.
Agent Barnett – the man who saw through all of it – described the Russia investigation to Justice Department interviewers as a game the agents privately called "Collusion Clue." Investigators could "choose any character conducting any activity, in any location, and pair this individual with another character and interpret it as evidence of collusion."
They targeted the President of the United States with an investigation their own agents had already buried – and did it anyway.
The memos have a name now. So do the people who signed them.
Sources:
- John Solomon, "FBI Follies: Bureau secretly probed Trump as a Russian asset for firing Comey: declassified memos," Just the News, August 5, 2026.
- "FBI Secretly Opened Probe Alleging Trump Fired Comey Because He Was a Russian Asset, Declassified Memos Show," White House release, August 5, 2026.
- "Secret FBI probe cast Trump as possible Russian asset after Comey firing, memos show," Fox News, August 5, 2026.
- "FBI Used Comey Firing to Open New Russia Hoax Investigation Using Debunked Information," The Federalist, August 5, 2026.
- Brooke Singman, "Durham finds DOJ, FBI 'failed to uphold' mission of 'strict fidelity to the law' in Trump-Russia probe," Fox News, May 15, 2023.
