President Trump on Tuesday signed an order declassifying all FBI files on Crossfire Hurricane, the government’s secret probe that searched fruitlessly for evidence that Mr. Trump colluded with the Russians to win the White House in 2016.
Mr. Trump’s legal team called the FBI’s probe of his campaign, which continued into his first term in the White House, an example of the weaponization of law enforcement and prosecutions against the president and something that must be exposed.
“We believe that it’s long past time for the American people to have a full and complete understanding of exactly what is in those files,” Will Scharf, the White House staff secretary, said as he handed Mr. Trump the memorandum to sign.
The order was among several actions taken by Mr. Trump on Tuesday aimed at exposing and ending the weaponization of government, which was one of his top campaign promises.
Mr. Trump signed an executive order targeting a law firm that once employed Andrew Weissmann, a former federal prosecutor who served as a top deputy to Robert Mueller, who conducted a two-year-long investigation into accusations Mr. Trump colluded with Russia.
The order targets the law firm Jenner & Block, which hired Mr. Weissmann after Mr. Mueller concluded his investigation into ties between Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia without finding any proof of what Democratic politicians had publicly insisted was true for years.
Mr. Scharf said the firm engaged in the “weaponization of the legal system against American principles and values.”
Mr. Trump called Mr. Weissmann, a staunch public critic of the president, “a bad guy.”
The order revokes security clearances for lawyers at the firm, prohibits them from receiving government contracts and limits their access to government buildings.
Mr. Mueller’s probe was spawned by Crossfire Hurricane, which was secretly launched in July 2016 during the Obama administration under then-FBI Director James B. Comey.
It stretched on for months and came to define much of Mr. Trump’s first term.
Leaked details of the probe fueled Democrats’ accusations that Mr. Trump colluded with the Russians to win the White House and provided fodder for their claims that his presidency was compromised by an allegiance to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The FBI’s probe was later exposed as a web of unfounded conspiracy theories that originated from Mr. Trump’s most powerful political opponents including then-President Obama and then-Vice President Joseph R. Biden, who were both aware of the investigation even as it was hidden from Mr. Trump.
Mr. Trump on Tuesday called the investigation into his campaign “total weaponization” and “a disgrace” without precedent.
“Frankly, the FBI should be ashamed of themselves, and so should the Department of Justice and so should Biden,” he said.
The FBI investigation centered on several Trump campaign staffers who the FBI tried to prove were conspiring with the Kremlin to secure a presidential victory for Mr. Trump.
It evolved into a sprawling espionage operation with secret surveillance and a falsified spy warrant that relied on fake Russian opposition research.
The so-called Steele dossier was paid for by Mr. Trump’s 2016 opponent, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and used by the FBI to justify spying on the Trump campaign.
The dossier was purchased by the Clinton campaign from British ex-spy Christopher Steele and contained salacious and unproven Russian allegations about Mr. Trump, including a claim that Mr. Trump paid sex workers to urinate on a mattress in a Moscow hotel room where the Clintons once slept.
The dossier was used in part by the FBI to obtain a surveillance warrant on Carter Page, a Trump campaign aide who was among the staffers FBI agents wrongly suspected of working with the Russians.
Another key player, Trump campaign staffer George Papadopoulos, was accused of receiving information that Russia possessed damaging information about Mrs. Clinton’s campaign.
Crossfire Hurricane led to the extensive Mueller probe, which consumed much of Mr. Trump’s presidency. It determined that Russians had tried to affect the 2016 election but found no evidence Mr. Trump or his campaign coordinated with the Russian government with those efforts.
A Justice Department inspector general later found serious flaws, but no political bias, in how Crossfire Hurricane was carried out, citing “gross incompetence and negligence” in issuing the spy warrants without credible evidence.
A 2023 report by John Durham, a U.S. attorney for Connecticut appointed to investigate the matter, found the FBI lacked legitimate evidence to launch the secret investigation into the Trump campaign.
Mr. Trump fired Mr. Comey and forced out his successor, Christopher A. Wray, before taking office a second time in January.
Mr. Trump was once ridiculed by his political opponents for claiming early on in his presidency that he was spied on by the Obama administration. It turned out to be true and Mr. Trump came to characterize the ensuing probe into his alleged and ultimately unfounded collusion with the Russians as “a witch hunt.”
Sen. Ron Johnson, Wisconsin Republican who has investigated Democrats’ targeting of Mr. Trump, said he’s eager to look at the declassified Crossfire Hurricane documents.
“I think you need a reckoning. You need wrongdoing exposed. If you are ever going to fix these agencies, you’ve gotta expose the wrongdoing,” Mr. Johnson said.
• Kerry Picket contributed to this report
