The White House on Wednesday declassied information claiming the FBI opened an investigation into whether President Trump was acting as an asset for Russia when he fired FBI Director James Comey, a theory an administration official said was not backed up by evidence.
The official said the investigation, known as Oxford Comma, was a subcomponent of Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI probe into potential collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and the Russian government — an investigation that has long drawn Mr. Trump’s ire. The predicate of Oxford Comma was the newly elected president’s decision to fire Comey in 2017.
The case was marked sensitive, which is generally done to keep a case off the books from other agents, the official said. The agents who opened the case said they believe it was going to be the least intrusive method to address a serious national security risk.
Oxford Comma was eventually rolled into Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s larger probe into Mr. Trump, the official said, and was later found not to have any merit when the rest of the Mueller investigation was closed down.
“I was unaware that the predicate for the obstruction included a claim that Donald Trump was somehow acting on behalf of Vladimir Putin,” the official said. “The short of it is, almost everything in the FBI’s possession at that point had debunked or ruled out that Trump or his campaign was colluding with Russia at that time.”
Mr. Trump fired Comey in May 2017, just months into his first term as president. The White House initially cited Comey’s handling of the investigation into Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails as the reason for his dismissal, though Mueller’s report claimed Mr. Trump was frustrated with Comey for refusing to publicly state that the president was not personally under investigation for potential ties to Russia.
Comey’s firing ended up as the catalyst that set a larger investigation into Mr. Trump in motion. After Comey’s dismissal, then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Mueller as a special counsel to investigate claims of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, and any potential ties to the Trump campaign.
Mueller ultimately did not find evidence that members of the Trump campaign “conspired or coordinated” with Russia, though it did describe some contacts between the campaign and Russian government-linked individuals.
Mr. Trump has frequently accused the FBI and other intelligence agencies of conducting unethical investigations into his campaigns and presidency, and has vowed to launch probes of his own. He has long criticized Comey, calling him a “dirty cop,” while Comey has lashed out at Mr. Trump, calling him “morally unfit” to be president.
Earlier this year, Comey was charged with threatening Mr. Trump’s life by posting photos of seashells arranged to form the numbers “86 47.” Comey has alleged he is being vindictively and selectively prosecuted, which the Justice Department has denied. Last year, he was separately charged with making false statements to Congress, though the indictment was dismissed.