Newly declassified internal FBI memos show the bureau quietly opened a counterintelligence investigation into whether President Donald Trump was acting on behalf of Russia, launching the probe in the immediate aftermath of Trump's May 2017 decision to fire Director James Comey. The documents, obtained and first reported by Fox News, reveal that senior FBI officials treated the sitting president of the United States as a potential national security threat based on actions that fell squarely within his constitutional authority.
The memos lay bare what many conservatives long suspected: that the FBI's leadership used Trump's lawful exercise of executive power as a springboard to investigate him as though he might be a covert agent of a foreign adversary. The probe was opened without public disclosure and without a formal finding that Trump had committed any crime or engaged in espionage.
The internal documents show that then-Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe authorized the counterintelligence investigation into Trump in the days following Comey's termination on May 9, 2017. FBI officials cited Trump's firing of Comey, along with public statements Trump made about the Russia investigation, as part of the basis for opening the case.
The memos indicate the FBI considered whether Trump's actions constituted possible evidence that he was "acting on behalf of" or was somehow compromised by the Russian government. Investigators framed the probe around two tracks: a criminal inquiry into whether Trump had obstructed justice by firing Comey, and a counterintelligence inquiry into whether Trump posed a national security risk as a potential Russian asset.
No evidence presented in the memos establishes that the FBI possessed direct intelligence showing Trump was working with or for Russia at the time the investigation was opened. The basis, as reflected in the documents, centered on Trump's own public conduct and his exercise of presidential authority over the FBI director, a position that serves at the pleasure of the president.
Andrew McCabe, who stepped into the acting director role after Comey's removal, played the central role in greenlighting the investigation. McCabe later acknowledged in public interviews that discussions about investigating the president took place at the highest levels of FBI leadership.
The memos confirm that the probe was closely held within senior FBI ranks. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who had authored the memo recommending Comey's termination, was aware of the investigation's existence. Rosenstein subsequently appointed Special Counsel Robert Mueller on May 17, 2017, just eight days after Comey was fired, to oversee the broader Russia investigation. The counterintelligence probe targeting Trump was folded into Mueller's mandate.
McCabe was later fired from the FBI in March 2018 after the Justice Department's inspector general found he had authorized unauthorized disclosures to the media and then misled investigators about it. He has denied wrongdoing.
The legal and constitutional stakes revealed by the memos are difficult to overstate. The president's power to hire and fire the FBI director is well established under Article II of the Constitution. Every president since the FBI's founding has exercised authority over the bureau's leadership.
Yet the memos show FBI officials treated Trump's use of that authority as potential evidence of a clandestine relationship with Moscow. Critics, including Trump allies and legal scholars sympathetic to executive power, have long argued this reasoning was circular: the FBI investigated Trump for obstructing an investigation that was, itself, premised on the suspicion that his lawful actions proved foreign compromise.
Trump called the Russia investigation a "witch hunt" from its earliest days and has repeatedly pointed to the probe as evidence that senior law enforcement and intelligence officials conspired to undermine his presidency. The newly released memos provide documentary support for the claim that the FBI's investigation rested on an extraordinarily thin factual predicate.
The Mueller investigation, which absorbed the FBI's counterintelligence probe, concluded in March 2019. Mueller's final report stated that the investigation "did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities." The special counsel's team did not reach a traditional prosecutorial judgment on obstruction of justice, instead laying out evidence on both sides and leaving the matter unresolved.
Then-Attorney General William Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein subsequently determined that the evidence was "not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense." No charges were brought against Trump.
The absence of any finding that Trump acted as a Russian asset makes the predicate for the original counterintelligence investigation all the more consequential. The FBI opened one of the most sensitive investigations in American history, targeting a sitting president as a potential foreign agent, and the multi-year probe that followed produced no evidence to support that theory.
The memos add to a growing body of evidence that senior FBI officials acted aggressively against Trump during 2016 and 2017 in ways that have since been scrutinized and, in several cases, formally rebuked.
The Justice Department's inspector general previously found significant errors and omissions in the FBI's applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to monitor former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Those applications relied in part on the so-called Steele dossier, a collection of opposition research funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. The inspector general identified 17 significant inaccuracies and omissions in the FISA applications.
FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith pleaded guilty in 2020 to altering an email used in the FISA renewal process for the Page surveillance. He received probation.
Comey himself was referred for possible prosecution by the inspector general for his handling of classified memos he wrote documenting private conversations with Trump. The Justice Department declined to prosecute.
For Trump and his supporters, the declassified memos represent vindication of a core grievance: that unelected law enforcement officials used the machinery of national security to target a president they viewed with suspicion, substituting their own judgment about foreign policy and personnel decisions for the constitutional authority of the chief executive.
The revelations also raise pointed questions about accountability. McCabe, despite his firing and the inspector general's findings, has faced no criminal charges related to the opening of the Trump counterintelligence probe. Other senior FBI officials involved in the Russia investigation have similarly avoided prosecution, though some have faced professional consequences.
Congressional Republicans have cited the FBI's conduct during 2016 and 2017 as justification for ongoing oversight and structural reforms at the bureau. Trump, now back in office, has made reining in federal law enforcement a central priority of his administration, pointing to the Russia probe as Exhibit A in his case that the bureaucracy operated beyond democratic control.
Investigators and congressional committees have not publicly confirmed whether any additional internal FBI communications exist that further explain the decision-making process behind the counterintelligence probe. Authorities have not said whether any formal damage assessment was conducted to evaluate the impact of the investigation on national security operations or presidential decision-making.
It also remains unclear whether any FBI officials raised internal objections to treating the president's exercise of constitutional authority as a counterintelligence predicate. The memos released so far do not reflect dissent within the chain of command.
When the FBI can open a secret investigation into a sitting president for exercising powers the Constitution grants him, and no one faces consequences when the theory collapses, the question is no longer whether the system failed. The question is whether anyone in power cares enough to make sure it cannot happen again.
