IC Oversight & Policy — 2026-08-11

White House Declassifies FBI March Toll Counterintelligence Probe Into Attorney General Sessions

BLUFPiecemeal declassification of individual code-named files builds a public evidentiary trail for the Fort Pierce grand jury while sustaining political pressure on former FBI and DOJ officials.

The White House Government Transparency Task Force declassified and released FBI files Monday on a 2017 probe codenamed MARCH TOLL into then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, with Just the News founder John Solomon briefing on the contents 123. The FBI's Washington Field Office opened the case on May 10, 2017, one day after President Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, based on a March 20 letter from Democratic Senators Patrick Leahy and Al Franken alleging Sessions had given false testimony about his contacts with Russian officials 124. Comey told then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on April 28 that the case would open, and Sessions's March 6 supplemental testimony, acknowledging contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, was not entered into the file until May 23 12. Special Counsel Robert Mueller's office concluded it could not prove Sessions had been "willfully untruthful," and the FBI formally closed the investigation without charges on May 8, 2018 124.

Analysis
Sessions faces no residual legal exposure, as Mueller's office already declined false-statement charges in 2019, so the disclosure functions evidentially rather than prosecutorially, handing the Fort Pierce federal grand jury investigating alleged FBI and DOJ civil-rights conspiracy a citable public record without subpoenas. Sourcing rests on one primary release, the White House task force's file dump briefed by John Solomon, with the five outlet accounts serving as parallel treatments of that same document set rather than independent corroboration. The piecemeal release of individually code-named files, rather than a consolidated dump, sustains multi-day coverage cycles and keeps pressure on named former officials still in public life, though the timing may equally reflect routine end-of-term records declassification under transparency directives rather than a coordinated effort to relitigate the Russia investigation's cast.

7 sources

FBI investigated then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions one day after Comey firing, declassified documents show - Washington Examiner
FBI opened probe into AG Jeff Sessions at Democrats' request even after he updated his testimony - Just The News
FBI Declassifies Investigation of Former AG Jeff Sessions, Codename "March Toll" - The Conservative Treehouse
Declassified Documents Reveal Democrats', Deep State Targeting of Sessions in Russia Probe - The Daily Signal
Declassified: FBI Probed Jeff Sessions Using Left-Wing HuffPost Article - Breitbart
MARCH TOLL — declassified FBI investigative file on Jeff Sessions - The White House (Government Transparency Task Force)
MARCH TOLL - Opening and Predicate (declassified FBI investigative file) - FBI (declassified via White House Government Transparency Task Force)