“To spend your life dedicated to protecting America and upholding the Constitution and then to be accused by the President of treason and suggest — and have him further put the suggestion out that the proper penalty for us would be death — I can’t describe to you how revolting that is and quite honestly terrifying,”

— Former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, on CNN.

“That’s not a term I would ever use to describe our workforce and I think it’s an affront to them.”

— FBI Director Christopher Wray, in an interview with ABC News, on the use of the term “deep state.”

President Trump said a new report from the Justice Department’s internal watchdog is “far worse than I ever thought possible,” calling the findings of the report “a disgrace,” CNBC reports.

The report, however, found no evidence of political bias in connection with the origins of the Russia investigation.

“Attorney General William Barr sharply criticized on Monday the FBI’s decision to open the Russia investigation, undercutting a major finding in a long-awaited watchdog report and at the same time showing his willingness to act as President Trump’s vocal defender,” the New York Times reports.

“John Durham, a federal prosecutor whom Mr. Barr appointed to run a separate criminal investigation into the origins of the Russia investigation, backed Mr. Barr’s findings in his own highly unusual statement.”

Said Durham: “Last month we advised the inspector general that we do not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened.”

“A long-awaited Justice Department inspector general’s report examining the FBI’s investigation into possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia rebuts allegations of illegal spying and that political bias played a role in the probe begun ahead of the 2016 election, but finds serious faults in other areas,” the Washington Post reports.

“The inspector general concludes that the FBI had an ‘authorized purpose’ to initiate the investigation and that the bureau’s use of confidential informants was in compliance with the rules.”

Politico: “Horowitz’s review did not find any indication that the FBI planted anyone in the campaign, as President Trump has claimed, but it does bolster concerns that campaign officials were repeatedly the focus of outreach by ‘confidential human sources’ seeking to establish whether the campaign was colluding with Russia.”

“Nearly a decade before the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka met a British intelligence officer who ran the Russia desk — and when the agent left his covert service and moved into private practice in 2010, she stayed in touch,” ABC News reports.

“The two exchanged emails but never worked together, and the man, Christopher Steele, would one day re-emerge in a most unexpected way, taking a central role in the Russia scandal that consumed the early years of her father’s presidency.”

Politico: “President Trump had a quiet Sunday schedule, with just one afternoon event in the Blue Room. But by midnight, he had fired off 105 tweets and retweets, going for the usual suspects — Democratic rivals, the impeachment inquiry and allegations of fake news by the mainstream media.”

“A long-awaited report by the Justice Department’s inspector general to be released on Monday is expected to criticize aspects of the early stages of the FBI’s Russia investigation but essentially exonerate former bureau leaders of President Trump’s accusations that they engaged in a politicized conspiracy to sabotage him,” the New York Times reports.

“The report is broadly expected to reject Mr. Trump’s allegations that the inquiry was a ‘deep state’ plot to take him down for political reasons… Investigators are said to have found no evidence of political bias in official actions, determined that the F.B.I. had sufficient suspicions in 2016 to lawfully open the investigation and concluded that officials never tried to infiltrate the Trump campaign itself, such as by placing any informants or undercover agents inside it.”

Politico: “Roger Stone’s supporters are making a pardon pitch everywhere President Trump looks: Fox News, InfoWars, Twitter, even the White House driveway. Michael Flynn abruptly hired a bombastic lawyer who spouts Trump-friendly theories about FBI duplicity that are widely seen as a pardon play.”

“Paul Manafort has kept himself on Trump’s radar from behind bars in a federal penitentiary by feeding the president’s personal attorney a conspiracy theory that Ukraine, and not Russia, interfered in the 2016 campaign.”

“In any other administration, and in any other time, it’d be shocking to consider that three men with such deep personal ties to the president might get their legal troubles expunged in an election year — not to mention from a president facing impeachment proceedings. But this is not any other administration.”

Washington Post: “Giuliani’s previously unreported attempts to shape the pick for the U.S. envoy to Qatar is part of an un­or­tho­dox foreign policy portfolio he has carved out for himself while also working as a power-broker-for-hire with direct access to the president and top administration officials.”

“The dual roles he has embraced is part of what longtime colleagues say has been a transformation of the once-iconic New York mayor into a multimillionaire consultant to powerful figures overseas.”

New York Times: How Giuliani led Trump to the brink of impeachment.

The Trump campaign is flooding Facebook with anti-impeachment ads that misleadingly imply House Democrats are pushing “treason” allegations against President Trump in the ongoing impeachment inquiry, ABC News reports.

“The ads, which started running on the social media site Thursday, ask for donations and float the word ‘treason’ in two different ways. One set of ads implies Democrats are making ‘treason’ allegations against the president, while other ads could be interpreted as the campaign claiming Democrats pushing impeachment are treasonous—a loaded word the president himself has used against his critics.”

President Trump said his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani wants to testify before congressional impeachment investigators about his most recent trip to Ukraine, Politico reports.

Said Trump: “He has not told me what he found, but I think he wants to go before Congress. I hear he has found plenty.”

Trump added that Giuliani will “make a report” of his findings to submit to Attorney General William Barr and Congress.

“President Trump has continued to use his personal cell phone to make calls, despite repeated warnings from his staff that the practice could leave him vulnerable to foreign surveillance,” multiple officials told CNN.

“Even as the House of Representatives began drafting charges against President Trump this week, his private attorney,who many believe is partly responsible for leading Trump on the path to his likely impeachment, made an audacious trip to the country at the center of the scandal,” the Washington Post reports.

“The purported purpose of the trip was to conduct interviews for a documentary on a right-wing media network. But Giuliani’s travel also appeared designed to send a broader and more brazen signal of the disregard that he and Trump have for the unfolding impeachment process.”

“Current and former officials in Washington expressed astonishment at how Giuliani — apparently on behalf of the president — seemed to be mocking impeachment investigators, if not the very idea that either he or his client should answer any articles of impeachment.”