Peter Strzok admitted in writing that the entire Russia investigation had "no big there there."
That admission came in May 2017 – the same month the FBI secretly opened a criminal probe into Trump's own attorney general.
The documents proving it dropped and the predicate the bureau used to justify the investigation is worse than anyone suspected.
FBI Opened the MARCH TOLL Investigation Into Jeff Sessions One Day After Comey Was Fired
The White House Government Transparency Task Force declassified the files,with Just the News founder John Solomon briefing reporters on the contents.
The investigation was codenamed MARCH TOLL – opened May 10, 2017, one day after President Trump fired James Comey as FBI director.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions had already corrected his Senate testimony more than two months earlier.
On March 6, 2017, Sessions sent a supplemental letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee explaining that when Sen. Al Franken asked about communications with Russians during the campaign, he answered truthfully – because Franken's question was specifically about a "continuing exchange of information" between campaign agents and the Russian government, and Sessions had no such conversations.
The bureau didn't care.
The FBI opened MARCH TOLL anyway, using as its predicate a March 20 letter from Democrat Sens. Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Al Franken of Minnesota – and an article from a left-wing news site.
That letter called Sessions' testimony "discernibly false" and "unequivocally false."
The FBI memo that opened the case declared a crime or "threat to national security has or may have occurred."
The bureau labeled the investigation a "sensitive investigative matter," stored the case files in a SCIF at the Washington Field Office, and placed the probe under "prohibited status" – overseen by Assistant FBI Director E.W. "Bill" Priestap.
Priestap was not a neutral observer.
He authorized Crossfire Hurricane – the original FBI investigation into Trump's 2016 campaign – drove the prosecution of Gen. Michael Flynn, and helped draft Comey's 2016 statement clearing Hillary Clinton on her private email server.
Crossfire Hurricane Team Needed Jeff Sessions Out Before He Shut Down the Russia Investigation
Priestap's operation had a simple problem: Sessions, as attorney general, had the authority to shut down the entire Trump-Russia probe.
Getting him sidelined through recusal cleared the path for Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein to appoint Robert Mueller as special counsel – and the two-year witch hunt that followed.
Strzok wrote in a May 19, 2017 email that his "gut sense" was there's "no big there there" – and the bureau's own analysts had been privately knocking down the Russia collusion claims for months before that.
Opening MARCH TOLL the day after Comey's firing was not a coincidence – it was the operation continuing by other means.
Al Franken Resigned in Disgrace Before the FBI Even Closed Its Investigation of Sessions
Mueller's office closed MARCH TOLL on May 8, 2018 – one year after it opened.
Prosecutor Aaron Zebley wrote that after interviewing Sessions and conducting additional investigation, the special counsel's office could not establish that the attorney general made false statements.
Sessions was cleared.
By the time the probe closed, Franken – one of the two senators who demanded it – had already resigned from the Senate in disgrace over a sexual harassment scandal.
Leahy retired without seeking reelection in 2022.
Priestap left the FBI in 2019.
Comey was indicted in April 2026 after posting a photo of seashells arranged to spell "8647" – widely perceived as a threat against President Trump.
None of them are in government today.
Trump is president again.
The documents confirm what conservatives suspected since 2017: the FBI did not open MARCH TOLL because Jeff Sessions lied to Congress.
They opened it because they needed him out of the way – and a Democrat letter and a left-wing news article was all the justification Priestap's operation required.
Sources:
- Fred Lucas, "Declassified Documents Reveal Democrats', Deep State Targeting of Jeff Sessions in Russia Probe," The Daily Signal, August 10, 2026.
- Steven Richards, "FBI Opened Probe Into AG Jeff Sessions at Democrats' Request Even After He Updated His Testimony," Just the News, August 10, 2026.
- "FBI Investigated Jeff Sessions One Week After Comey's Firing: Declassified Records," Washington Examiner, August 10, 2026.
- "Things We Hope to Learn from the DOJ Review of Crossfire Hurricane," The Heritage Foundation.
