Under way on this monday evening. Good evening once again from our nbc news headquarters here in new york. H this was day 1,054 of the trump administration. We have breaking news tonight about the news that is coming ea tomorrow morning. Both politico and the Washington Post were first to report that Committee Chairs plan to announce the articles of impeachment during a press an conference in the morning. Politico reports democrats, quote, plan to unveil at least two articles of impeachment on tuesday, charging President Donald Trump with abuse of power and obstruction of congress. The Judiciary Committee plans to vote on the articles on ci thursday. Nbc news has also confirmed these latest developments, and this comes after another marathon hearing on the hill in which democrats and republicans in the house judiciary committeo faced off over the evidence f compiled thus far against the president. During the hearing, republicans made a point of bringing up the repeatedly debunked theory about ukraine meddling in our 2016 election. Eo as you watch this, remember this is russian disinformation. A systemic, coordinated an russian interference effort does not meanff that some ukrainian officials some ukrainian officials did not work to oppose President Trumps candidacy. Republican lawyer steve castor was later pressed on the extent of the president s repeatedes contacts with russia. Take a wild guess, mr. Castor. How many, times has President Trump met with Vladimir Putin or talked to him . I dont know the number. Its 16. Dokay. How many times has President Trump met at the white house with president zelensky . Um its zero. And who is President Trump meeting with at the white house tomorrow . Do you know . Im not its Russian Foreign minister lavrov. Theer Conspiracy Theory abou ukraine, this russian disinformation even got an airing this weekend from texas republican senator ted cruz, who willen be a juror at any Senate Impeachment trial. Do you believe ukraine meddled in the American Election in 2016 . I do, and i think theres considerable evidence of that. You do . Er chuck, let me point out the game the media is playing a question that youve asked a he number of people. T youve said to senators sort of aghast, do you believe that ukraine and not russia interfered in the election . Look,on on the evidence, russia clearly interfered in our election. But heres the game the media is playing. Because russia interfered, the media pretends nobody else did. Ukraine blat nt a interfered in our election. Also today the Justice Department watchdog delivered to that long awaited report on the fbis russia investigation. Ss trump has insisted the Intelligence Community was spying on him and his campaign as part of the, quote, deep state conspiracy. They were spying on my campaign, and it went right up to the top. How did it start . You had dirty cops. You had people that are bad, fbi folks. Before i ever even announced, they were spying. I was spied on. What they did to me was illegal. They spied on our campaign. Who would think thats possible . Today the department of justice Inspector GeneralMichael Horowitz issued his nearly 500page report, which found no evidence to support those claims. Quote, the fbi had an authorized purpose when it opened crossfire hurricane, the investigation into the Trump Campaign, to obtain information about or protect against a National Security threat or federal crime. We did f not find documentary o testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the decisions. The i. G. s report did find, quote, serious performance failures along the chain of command of the investigation. Trump responded today with a misrepresentation of the findings while promoting the investigation now being carried out by u. S. Attorney john durham at the direction of attorney general bill barr. This was an overthrow of government. This was an attempted overthrow, and a lot of people were in on it, and they got caught. They got caught redhanded. I look forward to the durham report, which is coming out in the not too distant future. Lets do this again. The bottom line here, the president has for months said he was the victim of a spy ring from inside our government, an illegal conspiracy, an attempted coup as you heard him say again there, an attempted overthrow of his government. And this, of course, was none of that. Durham, for his part, weighed in on the i. G. s report today with a statement thats read in part quote, 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. That brought this report from james comey, fbi director for and during the early stages of the bureaus russian inquiry. What is he doing talking about his work . Hesg supposed to be a professional. If you must investigate, go get facts andve then show them to t American People, but dont be part of the sliming of the i. G. And the department as ath whole. Do your work. Fordo good measure, attorney general barr drew this conclusion from the same i. G. Report we justlu talked about. The Inspector Generals report now makes clear that the fbi launched anhe intrusive investigation of a u. S. President ial campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken. There you have it, and here for our a leadoff discussion on a monday night, nancy cook, White House Reporter for politico. Katie benner, Justice Department reporter for the New York Times. And robert costa, National Political reporter for the Washington Post andrt moderato of Washington Week on pbs. Robert, lets start with whats happening tomorrow morning. Theserr articles of impeachment. Well work our way back. Number one, how did they narrow it down . And, number two, is it enough . Is it sufficient to take the caucus and keep it together all the way through . Based on my conversations with House Democratic aides tonight, it will be sufficient to get the support of the House Democratic conference. Speaker pelosi believes and our lieutenants believe they have the votes for abuse of power, possibly contempt of congress. You see chairman nadler at the Judiciary Committee, on meet the press on sunday, now on monday meeting with his members, trying to articulate in private conversations exactly how to this narrow and focused so they can move forward this week. Nancy, another first is coming for this president , and that could be his reaction to seeing actual articles of impeachment come out. Just yesterday he tweeted or retweeted 101 times. It 1 was just a sunday. What could the reaction be in this case . Well, i r think that the whi house, you know, today was feeling really good about the fact that republicans have been so united against impeachment and they were feeling really good about polls that show that impeachment is not necessarily playing well in battleground states. But i think its really an open questionan how the president reacts tomorrow morning when the democrats unveil what the actual articles of impeachment will be. I think President Trump tends to take these things very personally. He tends to feel very attacked. And despite the white house aides best efforts to say that the president is focused on policy or that hes busy working, we can see from his twitter feed that he is obsessed and consumed by impeachment, and i think well just see more evidence of that tomorrowment i thin it will be fascinating to see how he reacts on twitter, how he reacts in his conversations with the press in the oval office andti what the y at the white house is like as he tries toou go about his busines while he g feels personally und siege. Katie benner, back to your beat and the report that came out today. I saw former federal prosecutor elie honig wrote tonight that in the oldha days, an attorney general who had accused a government of spying on a president ial candidate might resign on the day when the counterevidence comes out. Obviously not going to be the case here. I didse note devin nunes on fox news tonight speaking unchallenged about a spy ring as if nothing had happened. What happens now . Okay. So,ka yes, just quick top line, the report indeed was a mixed bag. It does say that there was no illegal spying. It says that this was predicated lawfully and of course it says that there was not political bias in there opening of this investigation. Of course we alsoen see that th fbi certainly, you know, broke rules later on in its application to wiretap carter page. I think Going Forward what were going to gosee, because the president has already said that he believes another investigator, john durham, is going to give him the results that heiv wants, that bill barr has already said he believes thatid spying happened and stil trying to figure out whether it was legally predicated. And he batted down saying were now going to see a situation where we have a federal prosecutorer basically underos tremendous pressure to deliver results of an investigation that has been prejudged not only by his boss, the attorney general, but by the president. Thats going tohe be a very triy situation for him to navigate. Its goingm to raise questionss to whether or not this investigation could be fair. And tove his credit, john durha hast, a great reputation as somebody who is fair. Also we need to keep in mind that the muddying of the waters, one that we saw in Congress Today when people are saying whats p true, whats factual, what weve seen with this reairing of conspiracy theories around ukraine that have been largely debunked and are unfounded, is that this also has anat impact. So h when you see these argumen, you see people trying to attack facts, we see the results of that. And one of the results is that were not probably going to see an article of impeachment around the muellerf report, this huge investigation that turned up all sorts ofne very damning evidenc against the president , in part because the waters were so muddied, it might be difficult to getie the votes on it to maka credible argument. Indeed robert costa was our mutual friend peter baker of the New York Times who wrote tonight that it was as if truth itself was on trial today. The republicans were working very hard in that hearing room on the house side. In your talks, robert, with sources in the republican senate, the next t chamber in a of this, is confidence running as high . There is a belief inside of the senate cloak room, the republican cloak akroom, that President Trump maybe has a few retiring republicans to worry about. Some of the names floated to me by several senators and aides include Lamar Alexander of tennessee. But he remains quite mum whenever i confront him in the senate hallways. He says he remains a juror. He doesnt have anything else to say at this point. And so you see a Republican Party watching President Trump drawing 20,000 people in florida. President trump will be in hershey, pennsylvania on tuesday, and they wonder even if they broke, what would be the reward for themselves politicallye as they look towa reelection in 2020. I know many people think its only about conscience at this point, but for so many of the people i cover, its about power and politics as well. Nancy cook, as robert just said,be the president has a ral in hershey, pa, tomorrow night. Might we be safe in assuming how to put this it will be impeachmentinfused . I would say that would be a huge understatement. I was with him last week or two weeks ago, excuse me, at his flor florida rally in sunrise right before thanksgiving, and that was aboutha 90 minutes. Half of it was all about impeachment. He seemed quite angry at the rally. The crowd was giving him a huge response. They were really cheering him on asal he ranted about impeachmen and that was before the articles of impeachment came out. So iof think its a good bet to say that this rally tomorrow night will be very impeachmentfocused, in part because i think the white house sees it as a very positive talking point for them in these key battleground states like pennsylvania. Katie, an i. G. Report like the one that came out today could be simplifying. It could have a cleansing effect on an institution, but im getting more and more of an indication that it will only complicate things for the way you laid it out. Of course. When your boss decides that part of your conclusion is not correct, its going to complicate things because then people have valid reason or defenders of the president say that they now have valid reason to attack this report. One thing that we should not ou forget, though is that chris wray, the director of the fbi, he has said that he accepts all the conclusions in this report, including some of the extremely searing criticisms that the Inspector General had for the fbi. Sp valid criticisms about actions taken by the fbi in its efforts to wiretap a former Trump Campaign associate. You know, chris wray has said he is going to take remedial action. He is going to look at all the employees involved in this decisionmaking. Youre right. This could have been a very cleansing moment for the fbi. It couldor have been a moment where the fbi gathers itself together after a few very difficult yearsth and moves forward. We can hope that that still does happen. Its important that it happens because weha are going into another election in which there is bound a to be election interference, where well see Foreign Government erinterferen, and wee need to have faith in this institution that it can help i arrest that problem and investigate it. Bob, before i let you go, were going to do an entire segment on Rudy Giuliani coming up in this broadcast. But i i have to ask are republicans saying to you in the nooks and crannies along the hallways in the capitol that in their toview, rudy has become whatever thedy opposite of an asset is toit this president . So many republicans ive pulled aside at the capitol feel like its not just Rudy Giuliani whos been swept into the riptide of this ukrainian conspiracy. Its they themselves, rank and file republicans, who feel compelled tofe speak out, citin different articles about ukrainian officials taking an opinion in 2016 and framing that as interference even as fbi director chris wray states explicitly in an interview today that ukraine did not interfere. There is no evidence at the fbi that ukraine interfered. So its giuliani symbolizing where so manys republicans hav now found themselves in a position arguing against the position of the fbi without much room to maneuver and with no plan to get out of that space. Three of the very best in the business. We never take your long hours for granted. Thank you, the three of you, so much for starting us off tonight. Coming up, former fbi director james comey speaks out after todays i. G. Report. He explains why his appearance on the president s favorite morning show might have been canceled. And later, yet another ukraine report in the works, this one being put together by that guy as the 11th hour is just Getting Started on a monday night in view of the Washington Monument and the white house. at chevy, were all about bringing families together. This time of year, thats really important. So were making it easier than ever to become part of our family. Thats why our chevy employee discount is now available to everyone. The chevy price you pay is what we pay. Not a cent more. Family is important to us. And we want you to be part of ours. So happy holidays. And welcome to the family. All the chevy family get the chevy employee discount for everyone today. Get the chevy employee discount for everyone today. Looking around here i see tablets, laptops, printers, smartphones. Theyre all connected to the internet. Theyre all connected. Can your network handle all those devices . Sometimes. Comcast business runs on the nations largest gigspeed network. So you can get the bandwidth you need to power all of your devices at peak performance. If all of my devices could have that kind of speed, i would be dancing get started with secure 35megabit internet and one voice line for just 64. 90 per month. Call today. Comcast business. Beyond fast. It was all made up, two years of sitting silently at the fbi while youre lied about and finally the truth is out. It was lies. There was no treason. There was no conspiracy. There was no tapping of trumps wires. There was no putting informants in the campaign. It was all nonsense. Put succinctly, President Trump fired the now former fbi director jim comey back in 2017 for his handling of the russia investigation. Today current fbi director chris wray stood by the institution he now leads while acknowledging some changes are needed. Its important that the Inspector General found that in this particular instance, the investigation was opened with appropriate predication and authorization. But the Inspector General did find a number of instances where employees either failed to follow our policies, n