Deep-staters at FBI framed Trump firing Comey as a Russian op — then apparently worked to cover their tracks



More revelations about the Crossfire Hurricane investigation appear to show just how far the deep state was willing to go to frame Donald Trump as a Russian asset.

The FBI officially opened the Crossfire Hurricane investigation into supposed Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election on July 31 of that year.

'They knew what they were doing was wrong.'

The operation was a partisan frame from start to finish — launched on the basis of what federal prosecutor John Durham found to have been "raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence" at a time when "neither U.S. law enforcement nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings."

Declassified FBI documents released by the White House on Wednesday show that an investigative subcomponent of Crossfire Hurricane code-named "Oxferd Comma" involved floating the baseless notion that President Donald Trump was acting on the behalf of the Kremlin when he fired then-FBI Director James Comey in May 2017.

The FBI appears to have strategically incorporated misspellings like "Oxferd" and numerical substitutions for letters in order to counter Freedom of Information Act requests.

Trump fired Comey for his handling of the investigation into twice-failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server for official public communications and Comey's perceived usurpation of the attorney general's authority on July 5, 2016, when he announced that the case would be closed without prosecution.

Another deep-state smear job

Among the newly declassified documents is a partially redacted internal memo that shows that a week after Trump fired Comey, Bill Priestap, then-assistant director of the FBI's Counterintelligence Division, directed the bureau to launch a full investigation "based on an articulable factual basis that reasonably indicates that President Donald J. 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 memo noted that the new investigation — marked as a "sensitive investigative matter" and built on the "predetermined criteria set forth by the CROSSFIRE HURRICANE investigative team" — would determine whether Trump and others obstructed or conspired to obstruct any associated FBI investigation and whether Comey's termination was itself an instance of obstruction.

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The FBI memo quoted from an interview where Trump, discussing his decision to fire Comey, said, "This Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story, it's an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won."

According to the memo, this "can be reasonably read to imply that the FBI's counterintelligence investigation was a factor in President Trump's decision to terminate Comey."

The investigation, the launch of which former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe and then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein were made aware, continued until April 2019.

Now in August 2026, the White House is highlighting previously released documents showing that this operation was launched despite the notion of Trump being a Russian asset having "already been widely dismissed by agents and analysts working for months beforehand on the Crossfire Hurricane case."

For example, then-FBI Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok said in a May 19, 2017, email to Lisa Page that his "gut sense" was that "there's no big there there."

The White House also pointed out that by the time the Oxferd Comma investigation was under way, the FBI "had also learned that the original allegations of collusion came from Hillary Clinton’s campaign, were funneled to the FBI in a dossier written by a former British spy named Christopher Steele, who was paid by Clinton campaign’s law firm, and that the Steele dossier’s contents had mostly been uncorroborated or debunked and were part of a political dirty trick."

FBI Assistant Director Ben Williamson said in a statement to Blaze News, "The weaponization that occurred against President Trump under prior regimes was inexcusable and wholly un-American. Director [Kash] Patel himself was the lead investigator who originally exposed the disgraceful Crossfire Hurricane scandal, and as director, he has released over 40,000 pages of documents to the public exposing similar malfeasance from former FBI leadership — a threefold increase from both his predecessors combined. As we’ve said repeatedly: Any individual who is found to have acted unethically or engaged in weaponization has been or will be fired from the Bureau and held accountable under the law.”

Everything in the dark

Jeff Clark, the vice president of litigation at the Oversight Project, suggested that "James Comey was well-known by his associates as liking Oxford commas, so they named the operation (clearly motivated by revenge in response to Trump firing Comey) as a hommage (Fr.) to their beloved Comey. But that doesn’t explain why it was deliberately misspelled as 'Oxferd.'"

"I’m going to go ahead and guess that they did that to deliberately frustrate future FOIA requests if anyone in the outside world happened to hear about what they thought was 'Operation Oxford Comma' and then go in search of the documents," continued Clark. Then the FBI could intake a FOIA request for that and say back truthfully 'Sorry, no responsive documents.'"

After poring over the documents, Clark discovered that in addition to misspelling "Oxford," the FBI "substituted in a zero ( 0 ) for an 'o' so that it’s not Comma, it’s C0mma."

"Totally designed to foil FOIA requests. It should be investigated as an obstruction of justice," said Clark. "You know, some real obstruction of an official proceeding. I consulted with a document expert. He measured the o-looking letter/digit in the document and concluded it was a zero."

Mike Howell, the president of the Oversight Project, told Blaze News, "They knew what they were doing was wrong. They knew that because it was wrong. Shame on them and those who cheered them on."

'We are the cat. And the cat likes eating mice.'

When asked whether his government watchdog organization frequently encounters clearly intentional efforts to hide documents with misspellings, Howell answered in the affirmative and noted, "Keep in mind that in the FOIA obstruction by Fauci adviser [David] Morens, it was our FOIA being obstructed."

"As you know, I try to always communicate on gmail because my NIH email is FOIA’d constantly," Morens wrote to the top scientists involved in figuring out where COVID-19 came from, including Peter Daszak, the disgraced head of the now-defunct EcoHealth Alliance, which directed U.S. funds into the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

"Stuff sent to my gmail gets to my phone," continued Morens, "but not my NIH computer."

Howell noted further that "bureaucrats, particularly at high levels, are acutely aware that sophisticated investigative operations will target them. It is a game of cat and mouse. We are the cat. And the cat likes eating mice."

Editor's note: Mike Howell is a contributor to Blaze News.

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The media’s Democratic cover-up is collapsing



Democrats’ growing radicalism presents a danger to the country. Their shrinking ability to conceal it presents a danger to the party.

As democratic socialists and other far-left candidates win Democratic primaries, the mask of moderation is slipping. The establishment media can downplay radical policies when they belong to activists, backbenchers, or losing candidates. It becomes much harder when those candidates begin winning elections.

The Democratic Party’s greatest political danger is not that the party features a rapidly growing number of radicals. It’s that ordinary Americans are finally getting a clear look at them.

The Graham Platner debacle in Maine shows both how much extremism Democrats will tolerate and how long the media will help them avoid confronting it.

Platner was sold as an acceptable working-class populist. His carefully cultivated image as an oyster farmer obscured his privileged background and family support. He disparaged fellow veterans, blamed military service for a history of incendiary online statements, and sent explicit messages to women while married. His policy positions occupied the party’s farthest-left edge. Then came the Nazi tattoo and a series of preposterous explanations.

Democrats, their leaders, and sympathetic media outlets stood by him through it all.

Only after a woman publicly accused Platner of sexual assault did his campaign finally collapse. Platner denied the allegation, but leading supporters withdrew their endorsements, and he announced plans to leave the race.

The episode illustrates two problems: Democrats’ willingness to embrace radicalism in nearly any form and the establishment media’s willingness to disguise that radicalism.

The second may ultimately prove more damaging to the party.

How can appearance be more dangerous than reality? Because the Democratic Party has been moving left for years while much of the press assured Americans that it remained broadly moderate.

Bernie Sanders nearly defeated Hillary Clinton for the 2016 presidential nomination. Two members of the Democratic Socialists of America entered Congress with “the Squad” in 2018. Under the figurehead leadership of Joe Biden, the administration pursued diversity mandates, radical climate policies, uncontrolled spending, and an open southern border.

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Aimee Dilger/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images

The establishment media minimized those policies, just as it concealed Biden’s cognitive decline until his political usefulness expired. Once Biden became obviously unelectable, Democrat leaders and their media allies turned on him.

The same thing happened to Platner. The party tolerated everything until his liabilities threatened its electoral prospects.

In both cases, the candidate was expendable. The ideology remained.

Democratic radicalism is becoming more visible because the party and its media allies can no longer hide it. As more moderate Democrats lose primaries, the press must cover the candidates replacing them.

American political journalism has always preferred the horse race to the substance: polls, debates, endorsements, fundraising, and election-night results. Those subjects are more exciting — and less revealing — than sustained scrutiny of what candidates intend to do in office.

But the horse race becomes a problem when the socialists are winning it.

In 2025, self-described socialists Zohran Mamdani and Katie Wilson won the mayoralties of New York City and Seattle.

More recently, Mamdani-backed candidates swept prominent New York congressional primaries. Former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander defeated incumbent Rep. Dan Goldman, while other left-wing candidates unseated Democrat establishment figures.

In Texas, far-left state Rep. James Talarico won the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate. In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed has emerged as a leading contender in the Democratic Senate primary.

More victories may follow as the primary season continues.

Each one forces the media to cover candidates it would previously have dismissed as activists on the party’s fringe. As establishment Democrats disappear from ballots, journalists have fewer supposedly moderate alternatives to place in the foreground.

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Adam Gray/Bloomberg/Getty Images

The problem becomes even more severe in heavily Democratic districts, where winning the primary is effectively equivalent to winning the general election.

Those nominees are highly likely to enter Congress, join Sanders and “the Squad,” and pull congressional Democrats farther left. Their anti-Trump agenda will give them a national platform over the next two years, making their positions increasingly difficult to ignore.

The establishment media can soften the language. It can call socialism “progressivism,” describe government control as “investment,” and portray ideological victories as demands for affordability or generational change.

It cannot indefinitely hide what elected officials say and do.

That is the Democratic Party’s greatest political danger. It’s not merely that the party features a rapidly growing number of radicals. It’s that ordinary Americans are finally getting a clear look at them.

For years, the establishment media helped Democrats preserve the appearance of moderation while the party moved steadily left. Socialist victories are making that deception impossible.

Grassley: Trump’s DOJ Is The Most Transparent, Shining A Light On Dark Biden-Era Secrets

'The fact that he’s been able to bring some transparency to government is a tribute to his independence,' the senator said.

Hillary Clinton’s shocking admission about Trump’s plan: ‘First moment of honesty in her entire life’



In a moment few saw coming, Hillary Clinton offered shocking praise for President Trump’s proposed framework for Gaza — calling it a viable path toward regional stability and reconstruction.

“I’m going to say something positive about Trump,” Clinton began.

“Trump’s 20-point plan for Gaza is actually a pathway to security for Israel, reconstruction for Gaza, and the possibility of self-determination, however defined, for the Palestinians. There are a lot of people who, you know, reject it because Trump did it. But it’s the only game in town. There’s nothing else,” she explained.


“I really believe if we took this 20-point plan, which starts with, you know, the disarmament of Hamas, a huge important step yet to be accomplished, but took all of the 20 points so that it wasn’t just disarm Hamas, and you know, maybe do some reconstruction, and you know, build some resorts on the coast,” she continued.

"But if you really took the whole approach that is embodied in the 20-point plan, and I know there are people who are working to try to move forward on that, there is a glimmer of a possible path forward,” she added.

“That might be the first moment of honesty in her entire life,” BlazeTV host Pat Gray comments on “Pat Gray Unleashed.”

“The fact that she even read all 20 points, much less is able to compliment them,” executive producer Keith Malinak says.

“That’s a big moment for Hillary Clinton,” he adds.

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10 Years Later, Hillary Clinton Is Still Struggling To Accept 2016 Election Results

Sour grapes!

Democrats are the party of the elite



For generations, Democrats have portrayed themselves as the party of ordinary Americans — factory workers, waitresses, truck drivers, police officers, construction workers, and middle-class families trying to get ahead. Yet one of the most striking features of modern American politics is how often Democratic leaders, activists, and media allies seem genuinely baffled by the very people they claim to represent.

The latest example comes from Washington Post columnist Monica Hesse, whose reaction to President Trump’s appearance at a packed UFC event on the White House lawn last weekend revealed a familiar pattern among America’s cultural elites.

Time and again, Democrat leaders appeared surprised that Americans cared more about grocery prices and border security than about the priorities emphasized by elite institutions.

To tens of millions of Americans, UFC is simply entertainment. It is competitive, exciting, patriotic, and increasingly mainstream. To Hesse and myriad other journalists and political commentators, however, its popularity seems to require explanation — as though they are studying the customs of a distant tribe.

That reaction says far more about elite America than it does about UFC fans, and few institutions better embody elite opinion than the modern Democratic Party.

The inability to understand ordinary Americans has become a recurring problem for Democrats. Consider one of the most famous campaign images in modern history. In 1988, Democrat presidential nominee Michael Dukakis climbed into a tank in an effort to project foreign policy credibility. Though the campaign intended the image to demonstrate Dukakis’ strength and command in order to reassure wary voters, the photograph instead became a political disaster.

To many Americans, Dukakis did not look like a commander in chief — he looked like Alfred E. Neuman from Mad magazine, wearing an oversize helmet and generally appearing out of his element. The embarrassing image became iconic because it captured something larger than a single campaign mistake: a cohort of American elites — consultants, strategists, and media professionals — who apparently thought the photo was a good idea.

The same kind of blindness occasionally appears among establishment Republicans as well. George H.W. Bush’s comments upon seeing a new and improved grocery store scanner became a symbol — fairly or unfairly — of a politician disconnected from everyday life. But while both parties have produced elite figures detached from ordinary concerns, the problem is far more pronounced today on the left.

Indeed, many of the institutions that now shape Democratic politics are populated almost exclusively by people who live, work, and socialize within a remarkably narrow slice of America. They attend the same universities, read the same publications, and live in the same metropolitan areas. They follow the same social media accounts. Their children attend the same schools, and their friends share the same political and cultural assumptions.

And increasingly, they seem unable to comprehend how other Americans think.

When Hillary Clinton dismissed millions of voters as a “basket of deplorables,” many Americans viewed the comment not as a gaffe but as a rare moment of honesty. It reflected a prevailing attitude among Democrats, and elites more broadly, that disagreement could be explained only by ignorance, prejudice, or moral deficiency.

President Biden repeatedly displayed a similar tendency. During the 2024 campaign (before he was ousted), he and his allies often portrayed concerns about illegal immigration, inflation, crime, and cultural change as either exaggerated or illegitimate, even as polling showed those issues dominating voters’ concerns.

Time and again, Democrat leaders appeared surprised that Americans cared more about grocery prices and border security than about the priorities emphasized by elite institutions.

Vice President Kamala Harris often suffered from the same disconnect. Her public appearances frequently projected the impression that she was speaking to an audience of policy experts rather than to working Americans — when she was not donning fake accents, that is. Her campaign’s struggles were not merely ideological; they were cultural. Many voters simply concluded that she did not understand their lives.

The pattern extends well beyond politicians.

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Leon Neal/Getty Images

Millions of Americans attend NASCAR races, pack country music concerts, and watch UFC fights. Elite commentators scoff and express bewilderment in response. Millions more display American flags, fill church pews, and worry about rising crime and open borders. Too often, the response from elite circles is not curiosity but contempt.

The Democratic Party once excelled at connecting with ordinary Americans precisely because it better understood their views. Franklin Roosevelt, known as a “traitor to his class,” spoke the language of workers because he wanted them to be part of the Democrats’ coalition for generations. Harry Truman connected with voters because he shared many of their instincts. Even Bill Clinton possessed an intuitive feel for middle-class anxieties and aspirations.

Today’s Democrat coalition increasingly draws its leadership from elite universities, media organizations, nonprofits, foundations, government bureaucracies, and professional-class enclaves. These institutions exercise enormous cultural influence, but they are not representative of America as a whole.

As a result, Democrats increasingly mistake the views traded in faculty lounges, newsroom editorial meetings, and Washington policy conferences for the views held around kitchen tables. That confusion helps explain their shock at one political surprise after another, especially Trump’s victories in 2016 and 2024.

Democrat strategists express astonishment after yet another batch of election results defies their expectations. Panels of “experts” search for explanations, and reports are circulated that blame political circumstances or voters’ various “isms.” But the possibility that the Democrats have lost touch with ordinary Americans is rarely, if ever, considered.

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Scott Kowalchyk/CBS/Getty Images

A political movement cannot represent people it does not understand. And it cannot understand the views of many Americans whom it increasingly views with a mixture of confusion, suspicion, and disdain. For a party that still considers itself the party of the people, that is a major problem it has yet to reckon with.

And it is also a problem for America as a whole. A healthy republic depends on officeholders who can understand — and respect — the culture and traditions of their fellow citizens, even when they do not share them. When America’s governing and cultural elites lose the ability to see the nation as it actually is, they make poorer decisions, deepen political divisions, and erode the mutual trust on which self-government depends.

A republic cannot long endure if those who wield influence come to view ordinary Americans not as fellow citizens to be understood but as strangers to be belittled and ignored.

Editor’s note: This article appeared originally at The American Mind.

6 Things We Learned From the Obama Center Opening Ceremony

The Barack Obama Presidential Center is finally open to the public. The Obamas threw themselves an invite-only launch party on Thursday with all of their celebrity friends. All the living former presidents showed up with their spouses. Joe Biden was also there.

The post 6 Things We Learned From the Obama Center Opening Ceremony appeared first on .

Even Kamala Admits She's Obnoxious | 6/19/26
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Even Kamala Admits She's Obnoxious | 6/19/26

Hillary Clinton calls out Biden's 'terrible' re-election 'mistake' in new interview



During an interview on Monday, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that she thought former President Joe Biden’s decision to run for re-election was “a terrible miscalculation.”

The interview with New Yorker editor David Remnick covered a range of topics, including the war in Iran, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Trump administration, and the 2024 presidential election.

'He made a terrible mistake for himself, his legacy, and for the country.'

The Democratic National Committee recently released an autopsy report on the 2024 election, which Remnick criticized for not mentioning Biden’s decision to run. Asking Clinton if Biden made a mistake by launching another candidacy, she responded, “He made a terrible mistake for himself, his legacy, and for the country.”

Clinton went on to say that if Biden had stuck to serving a single term, Democrats “would have had a real contest.”

“I believe whoever emerged from that contest, whether it was the vice president or a governor or a senator or anybody else, would've beaten Donald Trump.”

Despite Biden’s old age and alleged cognitive decline, Clinton claimed that before the CNN presidential debate between Biden and Trump, there was still a strong belief inside the White House that he would emerge victorious in the election. Those who attempted to convince Biden otherwise “were met with total denial” from Biden and those around him, Clinton detailed.

That denial continued even after the debate, Clinton said, with many still believing Biden's performance to be “recoverable” regardless of the renewed push for Biden to suspend his campaign.

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Clinton’s account comes only a few weeks after a CBS interview in which former first lady Jill Biden revealed that she thought her husband was experiencing a stroke while on the debate stage.

“I don't know what happened," she said. “As I watched it, I thought, 'Oh, my God, he's having a stroke.' And it scared me to death.”

Biden ultimately dropped his bid for president in July 2024 and immediately backed then-Vice President Kamala Harris. Harris would go on to lose to Trump in the November general election, receiving 226 electoral votes to Trump’s 312.

"There was no way to convince [Biden]" to step aside "by going public," Clinton said. "And eventually what convinced him was, you know, polling."

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Hillary Clinton Blames Biden’s Reelection Bid For Democrats’ Loss In 2024

'He made a terrible mistake'