Security analyst, Michael Schmidt who will be with us in just a moment. Were miccing him up. Nbc news and name law analyst and editor and chief of law fair Benjamin Wittes is with us this morning, as well as julia ainslie. At 9 00 a. M. This morning, House Democrats are expected to hold a News Conference to announce articles of impeachment against the president. Five sources familiar with the discussions tell nbc news democrats will bring two charges, abuse of power and obstruction of congress. Two people familiar with the matter tell the Washington Post that under the current plan, the Judiciary Committee would vote on the articles on thursday setting up a floor vote next week. This comes a day after the release of the 434page ig report that found the fbi was justified in opening the 2016 trump russia investigation. Also today, the president meets with russias foreign minister in the oval office. Quite some timing, joe. What a day yesterday, my gosh. Incredible. You saw at some point the republicans on the Judiciary Committee just just seeming to lose their minds screaming and yelling, chasing their own tails in a circle. It was about the same time the ig report came out. And, willie, the ig report, well, it was devastating to everything that donald trump has been saying for the past three years. His lie about barack obama, you know, crawling around trump tower like bugging his phone. A lie. The lie from the attorney general of the United States, just shocking, that fbi agents, quote, spied, spied on the president of the United States. A lie. Lindsey graham and William Barrs claim that the russia investigation began because of the steel dossiee dossier, a li disproven from the timeline that a third grader could figure out if you just gave them the times and the dates. And, yet, i guess what should not surprise us is william barr continues to lie. And now more troubling is he has a u. S. Attorney that is going around lying too. Because, you know, i saw this, somebody said this yesterday, if any other attorney general had aduesed t accused the fbi of spying and all the things that william barr accused it of and then it was disproven, all of his conspiracy theories disproven, i was shown to to be a liar by an Inspector Generals report, well, any other attorney general would be forced to resign. This attorney general, he just keeps lying. Its all he knows how to do now. I mean, he holds a press conference afterwards attacking the ig report. And some of the arguments that the republicans made yesterday. Oh. Dear, lord. I looked back to the halse ondao when we listened to the president talking about flushing toilets. This report, this ig report, comes from within William BarrsJustice Department. He sits at the head of that department. The Inspector General initiated this investigation. Took him a couple of years and they found the top line that this Conspiracy Theory of bugged phones and a deep state effort to investigate Donald Trumps campaign simply was not true. There are pieces of the 434 page report republicans are sooegs on seizing on on the way the fbi handled fisa warrants and things like that. But all the conspiracy theories theyve been spouting for a couple of years, simply untrue. Lets look inside some of the findings inside the report. They debunked the president s conspiracy theories regarding the fbi investigation into his campaign. President called the investigation, as youll remember, a witchhunt. But the ig reports no evidence was found that political bias or improper motivation influenced the bureaus decision. The president claimed the fbi spied on his campaign, but the Inspector General found no evidence the bureau tried to place anyone in the campaign, recruit anyone from the campaign, or try to get someone to report on the campaign. The president also claimed the investigation was opened based on steele dossier. They say the investigators that opened the investigation did not become aware in the steele dossier until two weeks later. They did take issue about the way they went about monitoring. The report identified, quote, at least 17 significant inaccuracies or omissions in fisa applications for a warrant. The Mueller Investigation has resulted in convictions for six of the president s associates, including a Campaign Chairman, cochairman, and National Security adviser. So there you have it, joe. The Inspector General of the Justice Department that william barr leads, despite what he said yesterday in his press conference, has concluded there was no deep state conspiracy out to get the 2016 Trump Campaign. Well, you know what else was revealed yesterday in the report was something that we knew during the campaign, and there was a split inside the fbi during the 2016 campaign. A lot of agents were not fans of donald trump and a lot of agents were not fans of Hillary Clinton. In fact, there were a lot of agents, important agents, who were cheering on the election of donald trump. I saw yesterday one part of it on november 9th the handling agent and cocase handling agent were celebrating the election of donald trump and instant messages exchanges going trump, ha, ha, ha, blank just got real. I saw a blununch of blanks this morning. And then the agent goes lol. This deep state theory is ridiculous and suggests again theyre either liars or fools because during the campaign was obvious there was a split. And a lot of people inside the fbi did not like Hillary Clinton at all. But Benjamin Wittes, as we go back out to 30,000 feet, the overview of this ig report is devastating to every one of Donald Trumps conspiracy theories about the fbi investigation into his relationship with russia during the campaign. Yeah, it really is. And thats without, you know, without saying that the findings on the fisa handling of the fisa application are not serious and upsetting, which they are. But it is really important to remember today what the allegations were that gave rise to this investigation in the first place. I mean, we were assured by the president repeatedly that there was a treasonous coup against him. We were told that this text that peter strzok sent to lisa page invoking the words insurance policy reflected some grand conspiracy. We were assured that there was an illegal wire to, that there was spying on the Trump Campaign, that there was shenanigans and mishandling of confidential informants, that there was something improper about using material from Christopher Steele, and that the investigation, in fact, did not start when the fbi said it started but had gone back some significant time before then. All of that turns out to be arrant nonsense, which is not a surprise in the sense that there was no evidence for any of it ever. But it has really occupied an immense amount of time on certain Cable Television networks and an incredible number of trees have died in the propagation of these myths. And they have become truths for a lot of people. And i think that, you know, makes it a significant day when the Inspector General of the Justice Department who, you know, the president has repeatedly insisted was going to come in and validate all this stuff and, you know, prompt the great reckoning, comes in and says, actually its all a lot of nonsense. Michael schmidt, youve been reporting and covering these series of events for quite some time and as ben wittes just stated, once again the attorney general of the United States bill barr stepped on the report with his own press release indicating that basically were going to move on forward, this is not much. But, in the context of whats going on, john durham, u. S. Attorney from hartford, connecticut, charged with investigating the same things that Inspector General horowitz had investigated, is continuing with his investigation. And he, too, issued a statement. Were you surprised at the timing of durhams statement and whats next . Well, it was surprising to see a statement from sort of a career prosecutor coming out in the middle of an investigation to sort of knock down some notions publicly or sort of, you know, be part of a publicrelations strategy that was coming out of the Justice Department. Durham essentially saying that he has more information or different information than what horowitz has and that his conclusions about the opening of this investigation will be different than the ones in the report. Now, the conclusion in the report yesterday about how the investigation is opened, because that is sort of the central issue here, did the fbi legally within its right following fbi guidelines do the right thing when it started this investigation, when it started looking into it . Was there enough there for them to dig . And the report yesterday basically saying, yes, the fbi did the right thing by starting this investigation. They acknowledge that the threshold to start an investigation is fairly low, but that that threshold was met. I think ultimately if youre the president and you look at the results of yesterday, if you could have if you could change anything and switch it and you could have had the political bias by the fbi leadership instead of the mistakes, the important mistakes that we learned about yesterday that were made in the application for the carter page fisa, im sure the president would have it reversed. He could hawould have had a dif result. But thats not what happened. And there was some real wrongdoing and some mistakes and some real problems that came up, but it was not what the president wanted. Julia ainslie, this statement by federal prosecutor john durham, based on the evidence collected to date and while our investigation is ongoing, last month we advised the Inspector General that we do not agree with some of the reports conclusions as to predication and how the fbi case was opened. Explain why this statement is so stunning to veterans of the intel and legal community. Well, mika, we were all scratching our heads in the press room at the Justice Department when we saw that. Generally when a u. S. Attorney comes out and decides to show his or her hands on what theyre investigating before the investigation is concluded, thats because of a reason of National Security. Something that they feel is so important that the public knows that theyre willing to go ahead and say some of the findings before theyve done all of their investigation. Its really hard to make the argument in this case that there was a National Security interest for john durham to put out that statement to say that he already has come to some conclusions in his investigation before it wraps. Also, hes talking hes going up against an investigation from horowitz that has been nearly two years in the making. John durham just opened his in may. And the timing of that statement really cant be understated the it came just moments after William Barrs own statement saying that he thought that the horowitz investigation was did not reach the conclusions that he agreed with and that the russia probe was launched on the thinnest of suspicions. So these two men really seemed in lockstep together. To you think about it, the entire reason why the attorney j general said he appointed durham was to get at an independent investigation. There was a third statement which seemed more in line to what were used to seeing when the head of an agency has to respond to a report. That was from chris wray. He said he wanted to look at the conduct of the people who were involved, to look at the mistakes that were made and do a review of the process which is something that has long been talked about in this country when we look at how u. S. Citizens are put under surveillance. Thats a debate a lot of people think is worth having. But Christopher Ray took a different route than we saw the attorney general and his hand picked u. S. Attorney to investigate this, john durham. Very different from what they said yesterday. Gene robinson, lets make no mistake of it, john durham now is nothing more than a hack who is working for Donald Trumps hack, the attorney general of the United States. He asked donald trump asked several years ago, wheres my roy cone . Well, he found him. Because roy cone, attorney general roy cone after the Mueller Report came out quickly quickly mischaracterized what happened and the conclusions of the Mueller Report. So much so that mueller called him up and expressed his concern at that. And then yesterday you have its incredible, you have the attorney general of the United States and a handpicked prosecutor not acting as legal guardians of our constitution, legal conservators. You actually have them acting as basically a latter day scaramucci or a latter day Sarah Huckabee sanders where they arent officers of the court. When you put out a press release like that, youre nothing more than a hack, youre a pr hack for a failed Reality Tv Show host whose branding exercise went horribly wrong and got him elected president of the United States. But thats what durham chose to do yesterday. There was no legal reason for him to put out any statement after an Inspector Generals report other than because hes now a hack for a failed Reality Tv Show host. Right. Thats thats the thats the other big story out of the Justice Department yesterday. The top story, of course, is that what President Trump has been trying to the story hes been trying to sell about the investigation, the russia investigation, the story that fox news has been trying to sell, and all of the Congressional Republicans have been trying to sell and continue to try to sell is is complete nonsense. Its completely wrong. It did not it did not happen. This was there was no spying. There was its it was its pizza gate. Exactly. The Conspiracy Theory is no more accurate than pizza gate. Right. Its just as accurate as pizza gate. Thats a good analogy. So thats the number one thing. And just one quick thing on the timeline, the problem with the carry the page fisa warrant which are serious and should be investigated. Ive read a lot about fisa in the past and rule and potential abuses, but that happened two months after the investigation had been started. Yes. It wasnt based on the carter page warrant. It wasnt based on the dossier written by ivanka trumps friend Christopher Steele, it just wasnt. All this stuff is wrong. The other big story is what you were just talking about. The shocking really politicization of the Justice Department and the use of for the attorney general and a sitting u. S. Attorney to act in this nakedly political way on the day that the Inspector General report comes out and to rush out these statements that are clearly designed for the political arena, clearly designed to give political cover, its hardly a fig leaf, but some political cover to President Trump is truly shocking. And i think americans should be appalled. Well, and, willie, the outrageousness of it all, again, all of Donald Trumps lies, all of his conspiracy theories laid bare. And as gene said, the conspiracy theories about the fisa warrant and carter page and that starting the investigation can be disproven by a threesecond look at a timeline. The same thing with the steele dossier. It doesnt matchup. The timeline, it just doesnt match up. But in this case of durham, i think i mean, we know we know barr will do anything for donald trump. Hes his roy cohen. Hes his hack. We know that. Hes already committed perjury before congress. Im surprised somebody hasnt moved to disbar him, because he really should be disbarred. And well see if durham should be disbarred as well. Its happened before, bill clinton got disbarred for perjury and well see if these men continue doing what they do. Perhaps theyll be disbarred too and perhaps justice will they will be met with the justice they deserve. But with durham, willie, he rushes a statement out and the statement is not in response to something that a mob boss said that he thought he needed to clear the error thatair or a dr did that he thought he had to rush a statement out to undermine that. He, durham, an officer of the court, felt the need to rush out a pr statement, like a pr hack, in response to an Inspector Generals report from his own department. I mean, this is so sleazy. Its so humiliating for this man. I mean, how