Was ‘Oxferd Comma’ a Typo — or a Plot To Camouflage Investigation Into Whether Trump Was a Russian Agent?

How do you spell Oxford? That’s a question in the wake of the White House’s disclosure this week that the firing of FBI Director James Comey in 2017 prompted an investigation — codenamed “Operation Oxferd Comma” — into whether the termination was at the behest of President Putin. It has sparked puzzlement over the misspelling of “Oxford” to designate that probe.“Oxferd Comma” was eventually subsumed into Operation Crossfire Hurricane,” the sprawling investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election that was quarterbacked first by Mr. Comey and then by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Mr. Mueller was appointed by the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, after the recusal of Attorney General Jeff Sessions.“Oxfeder Comma” came to naught, and “Crossfire Hurricane” ended in 2019 without recommending that Mr. Trump be charged with a crime. Mr. Mueller found evidence of Russian interference in the election — including a hack of the Democratic National Committee — but no proof that the meddling was coordinated with Mr. Trump’s campaign. Mr. Trump called the investigation an “illegal takedown” and a “ridiculous hoax.”Still unclear is why “Oxferd Comma” is spelled idiosyncratically. The Oxford comma, sometimes called the “serial comma,” refers to a comma placed after the penultimate term in a list that includes three or more items. Credit for the comma goes to a 15th-century Venetian printer, Aldus Manutius, who made a mark to separate words to make them easier to read. The word “comma” comes from the Greek “to cut off.”The connection to Oxford comes via the printer and controller of the Oxford University Press between 1893 to 1915, Horace Hart. His “Hart’s Rules for Compositors and Readers,” written in 1905, called for the use of a serial comma, as does The New York Sun’s manual of style. In 1978, the historian Peter Sutcliffe’s “The Oxford University Press: An Informal History,” christened the “Oxford Comma” in Hart’s honor.The Oxford Comma has its defenders and critics, so much so that the grammarian Lynne Truss writes in her “Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation” that “There are people who embrace the Oxford comma, and people who don’t, and I’ll just say this: Never get between these people when drink has been taken.” In 2017 a federal labor case turned on the use of an Oxford comma. After it was settled for $5 million Judge David Barron wrote that “For want of a comma, we have this case.”The case of the word misspelled by the FBI, though, has yet to be cracked. The former acting assistant attorney general, Jeff Clark — he was criminally charged in Georgia for his role advising Mr. Trump in the wake of the 2020 election — argues that “FBI managers thought this was clever. They imagined themselves as Blofeld in a James Bond movie deviously defeating the Freedom of Information Act.” Blofeld is Bond’s archenemy and leads the global criminal organisation SPECTRE. His codename in that nefarious organization is “Number 1.”Mr. Clark speculates that “James Comey was well-known by his associates as liking Oxford commas,” so the operation was named by FBI agents as a “homage to their beloved Comey.” Mr. Clark urges the misspelling to “be investigated as an obstruction of justice. You know, some real obstruction of an official proceeding.” Mr. Clark also claims that a “document expert” concluded that the “o” in “Comma” was not an “o” but a zero.In 2017, Mr. Comey posted to X — months after his firing and when “Oxferd Comma” was just getting underway — that “I’m all about Oxford commas.” That was in reference to the book’s title, which reads “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership.” CBS eventually turned the book into a two-part miniseries. Mr. Comey is currently facing criminal charges for another Instagram post — this one a photograph of sea shells arranged in an “86 47” formation that the DOJ alleges threatens Mr. Trump’s life.

Was ‘Oxferd Comma’ a Typo — or a Plot To Camouflage Investigation Into Whether Trump Was a Russian Agent?

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