The FBI famously opened a counterintelligence probe in 2016 to look at whether Russia’s interference in the previous year’s election was a threat to national security.
That probe never seemed to get off the ground, unlike the investigation into President Donald Trump, which at least was carried to its conclusion. But the reason for this was never public — until Trump released a trove of classified documents last month that just happened to provide the answer.
The document release was meant to corroborate Trump’s claims that the Chinese government corrupted the results of the 2020 presidential election, although nothing in the trove of information Trump released suggests this.
The memos, reviewed by The New York Times in an analysis published Monday, confirm that just a week after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey in May 2017, bureau officials launched a secret, oddly code-named investigation — “Oxferd Comma” — with two separate tracks: a criminal probe into whether firing Comey amounted to obstruction of justice, and a counterintelligence investigation into whether Trump himself was compromised by Russia.
After then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller to run a special counsel investigation, Rosenstein authorized Mueller to only look into whether any crimes were committed. Because of this, the second prong of the investigation, the counterintelligence probe, fell by the wayside.
Mueller interpreted his job narrowly, The Times noted, focusing solely on crimes as Rosenstein had ordered, and the counterintelligence question of whether Trump himself was compromised quietly faded away, never fully investigated or resolved in the final 2019 report.
Trump has always denied being a Russian asset, and no publicly known investigation ever proved otherwise. However, Mueller’s report documented an extensive Russian influence operation as part of Russia’s attempts to connect with Trump, raising questions about just what a dedicated national security investigation would have revealed.
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