fought this to a political draw. and that is why democrats need today and they need this trial in the senate to proceed in a fair way, chuck, because the president has pinned his argument that he s made to his base the past two years on this false premise that he was being unfairly persecuted by this russia investigation, that the impeachment now is simply an outgrowth of that. so what you ll see today based on democrats i ve talked to, is an attempt to try i emphasize try here but undo some of the damage that has been done by the attorney general, going back to how he handled the release of that report, which we are now finding out was completely legitimate and not politically motivated in its origins. if you remember, it was before the report even came up that barr declared wrongly that the report said no collusion. he also cleared trump on obstruction, even though mueller
insplikable behavior that is intolerable in the fbi. we have assembled our special team here in new york, but first, let s go to capitol hill and geoff bennett and julia ainsley covers the justice department for nbc. she joins me from washington. so, geoff, let s start with what we expect this morning. this is a senate judiciary committee hearing. we re so used to the house judiciary cast these days. the senate judiciary committee, a republican chairman in lindsey graham, a democratic ranking member in dianne feinstein. what should we expect? reporter: well, chuck, we should start with this, right, that the inspector general himself, michael horowitz, i m told, has a well-earned reputation for being serious, sober-minded, apolitical. he served in administrations both democratic and republican, so i suspect that he will try to focus on the substance of his investigation and particularly the issues surrounding surveillance, not so much the politics, but you can bet that will be insuf
people involved. but instead, he s actually having to defend his entire agency as they re being called scum by the president. julia ainsley, our justice correspondent for us in our washington bureau, for that, geoff bennett, thank you both. joining me in new york on set, msnbc s chief legal correspondent, host of the beat, ari melber. maya wiley, former civil prosecutor for the southern district of new york. claire mccaskill is a former democratic senator from missouri, also a former jackson county prosecutor. that s exactly right, kansas city. and frank furglussi, and in washington, d.c., chuck rosenberg, former u.s. attorney. a lot of former prosecutors here, putting people in jail. is anybody here to defend me. i ll defend you. thank you, maya. i appreciate that. this morning lindsey graham gave perhaps a preview of what we ll hear from him today on framing this hearing. this is this morning on cbs.
on 2016, try to relitigate the opening of the russia investigation, because that is the chief republican talking point over on the house side about impeachment, that impeachment, they say, is the end of a year s-long phishing expedition to undo the results of the election. they are not arguing with the democrats argument, which is about impeachment is all about preserving the integrity of the next election. but i ve got to say one other thing is that a lot of people find the timing of this should be fairly curious. you have some of the witnesses, in fact, who spoke to the ig, they told politico that they thought that the standard review process for an inspector general report was rushed so that this entire thing would drop in the middle of the impeachment process. of course, this report came out on monday when house judiciary had that hearing where they weighed all the evidence, and the hearing is happening today, when tonight, as you mentioned, the house judiciary committee starts th
impeachment. what they haven t done is made the case to swing voters. is that a mistake? i m not sure that they have to make the case to swing voters. what they do have to do is lay out a case for swing voters that they don t want four more years of this chaos. do they have to lay out a case that this is legitimate, too? oneti democratic strategist sai swing voters, even those against impeachment, as long as they know it s a legitimate investigation, they won t punish them for. that s right. andni trying to get this information outng in a consumab way to those voters that are not likeot us. nyeah. u that are not following eve detail, every nuance of every story. and the other thing that s important to remember isg for them to do what the republicans have done, we would have to embrace trumpism. we would have to say the truth doesn t matter. you can go out and lie. dick durbin would have to get on the dias and spew lies like others did on meet the press