We believe that ultimately were going to be able to trace this back in one form or another to a payment from the Trump Organization offer from the surrogate for mr. Trump. I think it is Crystal Clear they are doing everything in their power to keep this out of court and what does that mean . That means hidden from the american people. Lets get right to the white house and Nbcs Kelly Odonnell for reaction. We just had the completion of the White House Press briefing where this wasnt really covered. It was not the dominant topic in part because of the north korea news which well also talk about and in part because Sarah Huckabeesanders knows the land mines associated with this and took a much harder view of not engaging on the subject which is sometimes the back and forth between reporters and a spokesperson. If the door isnt opened at all, it is hard to keep going with questions. But as you point out, this is a case where Michael Cohen at least failed to properly protect the Trump Organization by engaging in the negotiations related to this with use of his Trump Organization emails. So if its only Michael Cohen then he had a misstep by inviting this question in and using Trump Organization or perhaps suggesting there is more of a path to the Trump Organization which of course is the private entity, it is not the white house and it is not the campaign. So there are a lot of questions that will still need to be asked about where this leads. But it is certainly a new detail with significance. And it goes against what cohen has been saying about a very separate process. Now questions did happen at the briefing from our colleagues here at the white house. And here is how today Sarah Huckabeesanders tried to shut it down. When did President Trump after that photo see Stormy Daniels . Text, mail, do you have any other information . I dont. Weve addressed this extensively and i dont have anything else to add. You acknowledge the president to follow up on aprils question, knows about the arbitration involving Stormy Daniels so does he remember speaking with his lawyer about that or does he remember meeting daniels ive addressed this extensively and nothing else to add. So it is a communication strategy to have her prepared and use it for any question to call up the Stormy Daniels issue. And part of the reason is why after Sarah Huckabeesanders acknowledged the president had by extension won in arbitration, that opened another crack in the door. Was the president a party to this in a more public way and arbitration, what had gone on behind the scenes. She had given a bit more information the other day that sort of stirred some of this up. The new reporting from colleagues here at nbc news with this email which gives us a paper trail is something that they were certainly aware of here at the white house and had a strategy to not engage today. I have sent personal emails from my work email address and vice versa because they are both on my phone and that can accidentally happen but i wasnt paying 130,000 to a porn star with no particular reason in mind for doing so. It could be inadvertent. We dont know. He was using bee using both h personal and gmail and if it was personal it may be an error of the cross over of the worklife balance. It is one of those things where now what cohen has done is if at best this is a sloppy mistake, it raises more questions for the Trump Organization. That is correct. That is where we are. Thank you very much. And i said the 52nd week of the Trump Administration. And clearly that is not true. It is the 59th week of the Trump Presidency because i have ari melber here. And kelly oconnell, well talk about north korea with you in a second. But the idea of the president being embroiled in a sex scandal is a salacious headline but that isnt the thing here. This isnt really about a porn star and not really about infidelity and an affair. It is about money and it is about whether federal laws were broken. And to explain why that matters im joined by my least salacious colleague, ari melber, the host of the beat, the nbc legal correspondent. It is easy to lose track in the conversation because somebody names Stormy Daniels and shes a porn star and the issue isnt whether it was for an affair or hush money it was that money that was paid that could have been influential in the campaign and the election of the presidency of the United States. That is right, ali. And the only reason weve learned what weve learned from Michael Cohen is because of the reason you just stated there is a federal election law complaint sitting that he has to answer to. You may think, oh, well, his boss is the president and they are in charge but we have a system of laws and we have an fec and that is put a lot of pressure on him to cough up some more information but he still hasnt said the source of the funds. And that is weird. I dont know the legality but people dont just generally drop 130,000 to somebody without any reason or explanation. But does the law compel him to give a reason or explanation . No. Right now hes well within his legal rights to keep this a secret but they are trying to have it both ways. Hes trying to suggest that because he facilitated the payment he might have been the source of the funds. This is a classic venmo defense. I put up the money so maybe i bought the whole dinner and then you you go i love you and had fun at dinner but i venmoed you back but here is the question. As i said to kelly, we dont a lot of people dont understand what they are supposed to keep on the personal mail and keep on their company email. Does it or not prove anything it was on the Trump Organization mail. Straight up alone doesnt mean that much. The reason why it matters and this a significant story because it is another brick in the foundation of this email that they were trying to hide something and indeed not only did he use the work email but then forwarded to his gmail which he used to talk about to to to talk to the Stormy Daniels side. And one more piece of information interesting with the lawyer, where he talks about what they think well learn from all of this. We believe that ultimately were going to be able to trace this back andn one form or another to a payment from the Trump Organization or from the surrogate for mr. Trump. Now that is Stormy Daniels lawyer, just one side of the case. But if hes right, and they can trace the money back to donald trump or the donald Trump Organization that is significant. And but were not hearing another side to the case. We are not the court of law. But were not hearing the other side. There is you drop the term hint of obfuscation which i would assume was an album title knowing you. But that is the point. There is something going on here that belies a normal explanation and if they were to provide one, if either Michael Cohen or the Trump Administration were to provide one, that would help. But in the absence of that, it sounds like Michael Cohen paid Stormy Daniels hush money. Yes. And that is why it is more than as you explained in your introduction more than a quote, unquote, sex scandal story. Michael cohen is taking someone to secret arbitration to keep them out of court. And this is many, many different types of coverup, if you have nothing to hide, why are you hiding. The court doesnt care if it is a sex infidelity or a porn star, that is not before the federal election commission. No. Did the 130,000 go toward something that prevented donald trump from being hurt in the polls. Yes. And in open court, which is again different than the fec and just a normal civil court where you have this out, if there is a valid contract that she said she would take money to be quiet, you could be paid to speak, a lot of reporters are paid in part to speak, you could be paid in a contract not to speak. If it is valid and they didnt do anything wrong, why do you need to be in secret arbitration. Just win that court case and be done with it. Hint of obfuscation if you were to drop an album. I like it. Ill think about it. Tune into the beat tonight at 6 00. It is always good stuff. Stormy danielss attorney will be one of the guests here on msnbc and just from the white house. Vanity pair is reporting the trumps list is set to include john kelly, h. R. Mcmaster and his daughter ivanka trump and his soninlaw Jared Kushner both of whom are Senior Advisers to the president. The author of that piece is on the phone. Gabriel sherman is a special correspondent for the magazine and a msnbc contributor. Gabe, this is interesting. Because putting aside Jared Kushner and ivanka and jared is getting himself into enough hot water why one would think he is more valuable outside of the white house than in but when it comes to mcmaster and kelly and people thought were the adults in the room, the people keeping the president from being more extreme than he normally would be and staying on track. Yeah. And you just pointed out the very reason that trump has so much difficulty with them. Because they are strong personalities in the case of h. R. Mcmaster. A threestar general and kelly is a fourstar general and trump doesnt like to be managed and hes had repeated clashes with both men and he plans to interview candidates for the job next weekend when he is down at maralargo. Let me ask you this, gabe, there are Different Reasons for getting rid of certain people. What are they . In this particular case, the president has seems to resisted john kellys controlling him as you said. But in particular, the things weve seen in the last week or so have been things that have specifically been worked around john kelly. In other words the president seems to be sending a message to john kelly, dont even try. Yeah. And that is what has alarmed a lot of people, ali. Is that the decision both on tariffs and north korea seem to have gone around the normal policymaking process. We should all point out that we saw secretary of state Rex Tillerson yesterday leading the day by saying there were not going to be talked of north korea and what did we see announced hours later, that in fact the president had agreed in principle to a sitdown with kim jongun. So this is the case of president going rogue and acting alone and as one source and friend of the president told me, this was availed shot at john kelly to say he is not going to be managed in the traditional way. And it seems unusual that a president should be able to work around his chief of staff. I think that says a lot about the chief of staff and the role that they are playing. But the bottom line is according to your article, the president is interviewing for replacements. I dont know how you do that with john kelly around. Tell him to grab lunch and then book an interview. Well, the president is saying it is for having his executive time on his daily schedule. But as i understand it, when hes in maralargo next weekend, where he has a little more flexibility and privacy to move around his private quarters, he will have some interviews and we should also point that the president on tuesday hosted john bolton, widely discussed around the white house as a possible National Security adviser. And just to your point about whether the president cares if john kelly knows or not, president has no doesnt mind at all if john kelly is twisting in the wind and as i reported weeks ago when kelly was in hot water about the rob porter scandal, trump let it be known that he was calling his predecessor reince priebus. And so part of this hes done this with Jeff Sessions in the past and he does it a lot. The president leaves people twisting in the wind. Is his hope at all that some of the people might just resign on their own . I think that is a very good way to look at it. One of the concerns the president had has been voiced to me by people is that he doesnt want these departures to be seen as sewing more chaos in the white house. So if he has to fire either john kelly or h. R. Mcmaster. That could be seen again as indication that there is more internal drama and if they just agree to go quietly in a smooth transition, thats the ideal outcome. Good to talk to you. Gabe sherman, vanity fair correspondent and a nbc news contributor. And more stunning out of the white house, the president agreeing to meet facetoface with kim jongun and the white house said north korea has agreed to denuclearize. Look, that is something that were going to continue advocating for and pushing for. But lets not forget that the North Koreans did promise something. They promised to denuclearize. They promised to denuclearize or talk about denuclearizing. The understanding, the message from the south korean delegation is that they would denuclearize and that is what our ultimate goal has always been and that will have to be part of the actions that we see them take. It seems puzzling that they would agree to do that without anything else. But the meeting would be the first ever for a sitting u. S. President. We dont know where, we dont know when, the white house said it should happen within the next two months. Is this a brilliant move or a brilliant distraction from the chaos in the west wing. Lets circle back to kelly oconnell. Kelly, lets not mince words. Sarah huckabeesanders has been known to lie in the past. I just find it a little hard to believe that the North Koreans have simply agreed to denuclearize in exchange for a meeting with the president of the United States. And i just want to be careful that the white house isnt getting free press in having that go around the world. Do we have any evidence that is true . Reporter well we have the south korean delegation with their National Security adviser in a meeting with the president and Vice President where he relayed the message from kim jongun who he personally met. So an individual both with President Trump and kim jongun. And he was the person carrying this message. We then had the president with the Vice President and a couple of steps behind popping his head into the briefing room. That set into motion the Public Events that followed. What stands out about todays White House Briefing is that the white house is now saying that there are constructive concrete steps and actions that must take place in order for this meeting to happen. That, i think, is obviously a walkback. It is not saying the meeting wont happen but putting more structure around this agreement. Whereas last night with the blessing of the white house, the south koreans said it would be a meeting urgent in nature in the next couple of months which on International Standards is fast to have a meeting of this nature, with all of the behind the scenes working going on. So very notable they are saying that we dont know what time and place and there must be steps taken. They did not identify who would determine if those steps had been met. Is there denuclearization, is there any cap on the ballistic acti activity. More questions now than last night about the president s likelihood of sitting down with kim jongun. That is very notable. Kelly, thank you very much. Kelly oconnell at the white house. Lets bring in expert voices on this issue. Sookie kim is a journalist of without you there is no us undercover north korea elite and spent a good amount of time in north korea with children of some is of north koreas elite. And lindsay ford is the director of Security Affairs at the policy institute, former Senior Adviser to the assistant secretary of defense for asian and pacific security ofairs. These two know a lot about north korea. Lindsay, let me start with you. I dont want to dismiss this. If this is true, it is amazing. But to what degree do you believe that the northans have actually agree the North Koreans have agreed to denuclearize. I believe we have good cause to be skeptical. All we have is what the south koreans have told us. We dont have any sort of confirmation of this from the North Koreans themselves. South korea will want to put the most positive spin they can on what we need to do Going Forward and on the north korean stance and the north korean have said in the past and the way they framed is if then. If the United States abandoned the hostile policy, things that we dont like, like the alliance and like having troops on the peninsula, and it gave us seek guarantees, then we would have no reason to have nuclear weapons. And you can phrase it as they agreed to denuclearize but those are two different statements and it is unclear which one they are making. The important thing here soaky is to make sure when were discussing this that we are not oversimplifying anything. This is a complicated set of developments, ab sent the normal process when negotiating with another country.