DOJ Inspector General's Report To Be Released Tomorrow
WHITFIELD: All right. Tomorrow is set to be an extraordinarily busy day in Washington. Not only will there be another impeachment hearing on Capitol Hill, we're also expecting the release of a highly anticipated report from the Department of Justice Inspector General's Office on the origins of the Russia investigation. President Trump seems to be pretty excited about the report, tweeting, "IG report out tomorrow. That will be the big story." But CNN is learning the report from DOJ inspector general Michael Horowitz is expected to find no evidence of Trump's conspiracy theory that U.S. intel agency spied on his 2016 campaign. CNN's Marshall Cohen joins me now to break all this down, all that you know. So, Marshall, what more do we know about this report?</s>MARSHALL COHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Fred, one thing we know it's going to be huge. OK. There's going to be hundreds of pages to go through tomorrow while this impeachment hearing is unfolding. So it's definitely going to be split screen day. But on the conclusions of what's inside that report, sources have told CNN that one of the big things that will be there is a determination that the Russia investigation was properly launched in 2016. Now you'll remember the president has been saying over and over and over that this should have never happened. So that's going to be one big split. And as you mentioned, another conclusion that the government did not try to implant spies in the Trump campaign or to infiltrate the Trump campaign for political purposes. That's another big claim from the president and we're expecting that that will be refuted in this report tomorrow.</s>WHITFIELD: And that is fascinating because the Attorney General William Barr had kind of intimated that something, you know, had gone wrong, something, you know, untoward. Meantime, he did assign, you know, another player in this investigation. Didn't he?</s>COHEN: Right. He -- it's pretty complicated. He tapped the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, John Durham, to also look into the origins of the Russia investigation. And, you know, this is a huge undertaking. There were all those conclusions that I mentioned. That's just the tip of the iceberg. There was also surveillance of a Trump campaign adviser Carter Page who was surveilled and wiretapped in 2016. Now the report is going to say we're expecting that that surveillance was appropriate, but there were some improprieties and some sloppiness and some problems with the way that they prepared those applications and some of those problems which were referred out to that other investigator, John Durham, potentially criminal. We've learned that that part of the investigation has become a criminal investigation for some potential doctoring or altering of e-mails. But just to zoom out, you know, whether or not one or two e-mails may have been doctored, Durham will deal with that, but the big picture conclusion, Fred, that this guy, Carter Page, was targeted for the right reasons, in good faith, that should be a big conclusion tomorrow.</s>WHITFIELD: Fascinating. OK. We're all in the edge of our seats. Tomorrow is promising a whole lot of activity. All right, Marshall Cohen. Thank you so much.</s>COHEN: Thanks, Fred.</s>WHITFIELD: All right, next, to Capitol Hill, where Democrats are planning their next move in the impeachment inquiry. What we can expect from tomorrow's House Judiciary hearing on Capitol Hill.