Iowa Politics with Jeff Stein -- Wed. Aug. 12, 2026

Oxford comma.

I'm Jeff Stein with today's Iowa Politics Report.

As someone who uses words for a living, I'm well familiar with the Oxford comma.

That's when you put a comma in when listing three things, as in red comma, white comma, and blue.

Now some folks take out the comma before the conjunction and, but I think it's necessary.

Some also call it the serial comma because it has to do with things in a series.

Now however, Oxford comma takes on a whole new meaning.

Newly released documents show that Oxford comma was a secret FBI criminal investigation code name launched in May 2017 after President Trump fired FBI Director James Comey.

Now those government documents show the probe examined whether Trump acted knowingly or unknowingly as a Russian asset.

It was a

component of the broader Crossfire Hurricane investigation and was later folded into Robert Mueller's special counsel probe before closing without charges.

Now again, this was the operation the FBI engaged in against a sitting president.

But here's how you know it was the deepest of the deep state at work.

Instead of spelling Oxford comma correctly, they spelled Oxford as O-X-F-E-R-D with an E, and instead of the letter O in the word comma, they used a zero.

Why?

Did they think it was a clever turn of a phrase?

No, they did it specifically to avoid being caught later.

presumed word leaked of a sting operation called Oxford comma.

Anyone searching an electronic database would have spelled it correctly and it would have shown no data.

You had to know to misspell Oxford and drop a zero into the word comma in order for anything to show up on a search.

Talk about a strong password.

If you're the FBI

and you are doing a secret investigation, you don't need to have a fancy code name that is hard for folks in other parts of the government to find.

Unless you knew you were doing something wrong.

That certainly turned out to be the case.

If those folks had spent half as much time tracking down those on the 10 most wanted list as they did trying to frame a president with whom they disagreed politically,

Well, you can finish that sentence for yourselves.

And that's the Iowa Politics Report for Wednesday, August 12 on Twitter, Instagram, Gitter, Threads and Truth Social at Iowa Politics.

I'm Jeff Stein on News Talk 1540, KXEL.