NYT Reporter in 2026: What Happened to Investigation FBI Wanted Done Into Trump’s Ties to Russia?

Michael S. Schmidt is a New York Times reporter and the author of "Donald Trump v the United States." On Sunday, The New York Times published his piece on how a counterintelligence inquiry into President Donald Trump's ties to Russia was derailed.

NEW: The trove of documents released by the White House last week about the Russia investigation shed new light on a longstanding question: Whatever happened to the counterintelligence investigation the FBI wanted done into Trump's ties to Russia? Short answer: It was sidetracked…

— Michael S. Schmidt (@nytmike) August 10, 2026

Schmidt writes:

But in recent weeks, the White House has added a dimension to its push to rewrite the history of the Russia investigation, releasing a trove of previously classified F.B.I. memos that it says back up President Trump’s claims that a so-called deep state was out to get him.

There is little new of substance in the documents, and nothing that fundamentally undercuts the F.B.I.’s rationale for pursuing the Russia investigation.

But the material does shed new light on an often overlooked aspect of the swirl of events surrounding Mr. Trump in his first months in office in 2017: the bureau’s remarkable decision to open a separate counterintelligence investigation into the president of the United States, and how that inquiry was sidetracked before it had much of a chance to get going.

Mr. Trump has always dismissed as baseless smears suggestions that he was a Russian asset or had extensive financial ties to Russia. And no publicly known investigation into Mr. Trump ever demonstrated that he was acting at the behest of the Russians.

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Any serious newspaper would be deeply ashamed they accepted a Pulitzer for fraudulent Russiagate reporting. And the fact they're STILL trying to justify it is a level of abasement that is hard to fathom. https://t.co/mN5nP9T9TN

— Mark Hemingway (@Heminator) August 11, 2026

I know it must be tremendously embarrassing to be known as someone who helped spread the lie that Trump stole the 2016 election by colluding with Russia, but have some dignity, man.

— Mollie (@MZHemingway) August 11, 2026

Dems should call for a Special Counsel to investigate Trump’s ties to Russia.

— Jarvis (@jarvis_best) August 10, 2026

Was this tweet like accidentally archived to publish and you got the date wrong by ten years? It happens.

— Eric CIAramella’s Dirty Whistle (@TheAndersPaul) August 11, 2026

This is the most important takeaway you have after reviewing the documents? That’s poor journalism.

— Kodabee 🇺🇸 (@koda9001) August 11, 2026

Oh, it's being investigated. Not lookin good for the FBI. Many of us are following it. Just not in the @nytimes.

— AAE (@AAC0519) August 11, 2026

And the winner for most ridiculous X post of the year goes to……..

Michael Schmidt

— Jim Collins (@JimCollinsJr) August 11, 2026

Classic New York Times: still obsessing over arcane Russiagate detritus from 2017, but no interest in investigating COVID origins and US involvement in the likely lab leak in 2019.

— Douglas Van Tress (@douglas_tress) August 11, 2026

Jesus, the most investigated person in the history of the world and it’s still not enough for you. Hack.

— FredA1776 (@A1776Fred) August 11, 2026

The headline WAS THE PLAN. It was started so NYT could write another “collusion” article.

— Knockonwood (@Knockonwood10) August 11, 2026

Oh, stop. The Big Lie has been debunked and your newspaper fraudulently was awarded a Pulitzer.

— Bob Sikes (@BobSikes) August 11, 2026

“Side Tracked”? A $40 million investigation with probably a 100 people is called side tracked? Think this guy has an agenda instead of reporting unbiased facts?

— Swissbulldawg @BioEd (@Swissbulldawg1) August 11, 2026

Maybe you guys should appoint a special counsel, give it endless funding, staffed with the biggest anti-Trump Clinton campaign lawyers, the entire politicized 7th floor of the FBI, the CIA/intelligence community & FIVE-EYES foreign IC & investigate Trump for 2.5 years.

Oh wait..

— Resist The Devil/Come To Christ/This is his world (@PoliticsNPrison) August 11, 2026

Ah see thats the problem, you only had half the government investigate this one man for 10 years. We need to refocus, put another thousand researchers on it, and give them another 5 years. That'll find the Russian collusion for sure!

— Mecha Thomas Jefferson (@MechaJefferson) August 11, 2026

It has been ten years, and there is still no sign that the fake news will ever stop lying.

Today, for instance, the New York Times finally decided to tell its readers about OXFERD C0MMA, one of the most outrageous investigations in American history, in which the intelligence and… pic.twitter.com/qArSynWIAN

— Hans Mahncke (@HansMahncke) August 11, 2026

The post continues:

… law enforcement apparatus was turned against the sitting president of the United States himself on the basis of a thoroughly discredited political hoax.

Needless to say, they whitewashed the entire affair, somehow transforming it into a complaint that Trump was not investigated aggressively enough.

But its treatment of the name itself is perhaps the most revealing part.

OXFERD C0MMA was not simply a peculiar FBI code name. “Oxford” became “Oxferd,” while the “O” in “Comma” was replaced with a zero, alterations that made the investigation impossible to discover through searches, FOIA requests, etc. It took more than nine years for the public even to learn what we now know, and we would never have learned about it at all had President Trump not been reelected.

So ok, the FBI concealed the investigation in the name. Now watch how the New York Times conceals what the FBI did.

Here is the entirety of its explanation:

“It was oddly code-named Oxferd Comma.”

That’s it.

There is no explanation of what was supposedly “odd” about the name, neither any mention of how those deliberate misspellings frustrated discovery. And, most remarkably, they changed the zero in C0MMA back into the letter O, literally erasing one of the devices used to conceal the investigation while purporting to report on it.

Nine years of concealment is whitewashed by the New York Times as an amusing little spelling quirk. And then they move on.

It was thrown on the trash heap because there was nothing there. It was a massive case of the weaponization of the accusation. And it worked until people realized it was all made up.

— Junior Tuffy Hanson (@JrTuffyHanson) August 11, 2026

It’s 2024 and you are still Russiagating? This is nothing but QAnon for the TDS set. Your punishment is having to sleep with Nicole Wallace… 🤮

— Hynek Dvorak (@DvorakHynek) August 11, 2026

We thought that was just some really harsh language, but it turns out Schmidt really is married to Nicole Wallace. We're sure she thought the piece was brilliant.

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Editor's Note: The mainstream media continues to deflect, gaslight, spin, and lie about President Trump, his administration, and conservatives.

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