Newly declassified FBI memos have exposed what conservatives long suspected: the bureau launched a secret criminal investigation targeting President Donald Trump in May 2017, predicated on the absurd theory that he might be acting as a Russian asset when he fired Director James Comey. The investigation, codenamed “Oxferd Comma,” was opened despite the FBI’s own evidence showing no collusion between Trump and the Kremlin.
The electronic communication opening the probe, dated May 16, 2017—just one week after Comey’s firing—declared that the FBI had an “articulable factual basis” to investigate whether Trump “may be or has been, wittingly or unwittingly, involved in activities for or on behalf of the Government of the Russian Federation.” The memo, approved by then-FBI General Counsel James Baker and Assistant Director for Counterintelligence William Priestap, explicitly stated the investigation’s goal: to determine if President Trump was “directed by, controlled by, and/or coordinated activities with, the Russian Federation.”
The FBI opened a counterintelligence investigation into a sitting president based on the premise that he might be a Russian agent, even while their own evidence showed no collusion. They weren’t investigating a crime—they were investigating a man, desperately searching for any pretext to justify their predetermined conclusion that Trump was illegitimate.
The bureau’s justification? Trump’s public explanations for firing Comey. According to the memo, the president’s statements about the FBI’s Russia investigation being a factor in his decision to terminate Comey provided the pretext for treating him as a potential foreign asset. In other words, Trump committed the sin of being transparent about his frustration with a politically motivated investigation, and the FBI responded by treating him as a traitor.
This revelation demolishes whatever remaining credibility the FBI claimed to possess regarding its handling of the Russia investigation. We now have documentary proof that bureau leadership—Baker, Priestap, and presumably others—signed off on treating the duly elected president as a possible Russian agent based on little more than their own partisan animus. The same FBI that gave Hillary Clinton a pass for her classified email server treated Trump as a foreign threat for exercising his constitutional authority to fire an insubordinate subordinate.
The timing is particularly damning. The investigation opened in May 2017, just as Special Counsel Robert Mueller was being appointed. Was this the insurance policy Peter Strzok and Lisa Page texted about? The memos suggest the FBI was building a parallel track to pursue Trump as a Russian asset even as the Mueller probe got underway, ensuring that if one investigation failed to take him down, another might succeed.
What consequences have Baker and Priestap faced for authorizing an investigation of a sitting president based on such flimsy pretexts? Baker went on to become a CNN contributor, naturally. Priestap retired comfortably. Meanwhile, the FBI continues to resist oversight and accountability, fighting congressional subpoenas and slow-walking document production as if the bureau answers to no one.
These declassified memos aren’t just historical curiosities—they’re smoking gun evidence of an administrative state willing to weaponize its power against a president it opposed. The FBI didn’t merely make mistakes in its Russia investigation; it actively sought to criminalize the exercise of presidential authority and treat the chief executive as a foreign agent. If they could do this to a president, what can ordinary Americans expect when the bureau turns its attention toward them?
Congress must act. The FBI cannot be reformed; it must be dismantled and rebuilt from the ground up with strict oversight mechanisms and genuine accountability for abuses of power. The “Oxferd Comma” investigation represents a line that should never have been crossed—a direct assault on the constitutional order by an agency that placed its own political preferences above the will of the American people.
The deep state isn’t a conspiracy theory. It’s documented in the FBI’s own memos, written in their own words, signed by their own hands. And they were so confident they’d never face consequences that they kept the paper trail.
Providence watches over the bold.
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