Cohen flip . Are you worried hes not loyal . Thank you, everybody. I hope you saw the crowds in key west. We have never seen anything like that. The president is also looking for loyalty when it comes the cia director mike pompeos nomination to be secretary of state. Right now at this time yesterday President Trump said senator rand paul has quote never let me down. Just an hour ago an rand paul spokesman said even after meeting with mr. Pompeo today nothing changed in terms of his opposition to the nomination. Following the story for us is nbc newss geoff bennett. What is preoccupying the president right now . Because he is worried about mike pompeos confirmation by the senate to be the secretary of state. But reports say he is very, very concerned about Michael Cohen. Thats right, ali. I mean the president s friends, allies, outside advisors say that among the many issues and scandals facing this president , the Michael Cohen predicament bothers him more than most. In part because the white house has such little transparency into and control over the investigation that those prosecutors in new york are carrying out. And as we know, Michael Cohen is the nexus, the inpo of connection between President Trump and the two scandal that dogged him the most, all thing russia and the series of affairs with Stormy Daniels and ms. Mcdougal. The president , we should say, denies having any involvement with either of these women. But we have also learned today that a federal judge in los angeles has set a hearing for tomorrow on this bid by trump and Michael Cohen to delay a lawsuit that Stormy Daniels and her attorney, Michael Avenatti filed to have that nondisclosure agreement rendered invalid. Michael avenatti, who is Michael Cohens chief nemesis in the media put out this tweet. He says this. We will appear in the morning and vehemently argue against the attempt by mr. Cohen and mr. Trump to delay this case. The American People deserve the truth as quickly as possible. Separately we have learned that cohen and his attorney dropped into lie bell lawsuits one against buzz feed and other against gps over that steele dossier. Cohens attorney said those lawsuits sucked up too much time and resources and that they are now focused intently on this federal investigation. Geoff bennett for us in florida, where the president is. Could the man who has been supremely loyal to donald trump for years flip on his boss. Michael cohen, the president s personal lawyer is facing mounting pressure from multiple investigations culminating with a rid on his only and his business by the fbi earlier this month. Now those closest to him are warning hip. Alan dershowitz told him that federal prosecutors are going to threaten him with a long prison term and turn him into a canary that sings. On a scale of 100 to 1 where 100 is fully protecting the president mr. Cohen isnt a 1. Joining me, barbara mcquaid. Barbara, this sort of may be about loyalty, may not be. It seems to have a lot to did with the potential for a federal court sentence. Sure. You know, i cant speak specifically with regard to Michael Cohen but i can tell you that oftentimes when a target or a defendant comes in the door their first reaction is to be defiant and talk about how they are going to beat this wrap and that they will never snitch on their friend and allies of the but once they become convinced that the evidence is overwhelming and they will be convicted and once they see how much prison time they might be facing they begin to look for ways to reduce their losses. One thing the system permits is a reduction in a sentence for cooperation. So that becomes the best strategies for a defendant. We see Something Like 95 of defendants plead guilty in federal cases. So operation becomes their only avenue for reducing their sentence. In the eni have seen many many defendants cooperate against their closest friends and allies in an evident to reduce their sentence so they can return home to their families many many years sooner. So nothing ever with this administration is what it appears to be. What i found interesting is that two of trumps legal advisors, not in the formal sense but even Alan Dershowitz who never really comes down on a side thats not the president s would give an interview to a third party suggesting that they are looking at a long sentence for mr. Cohen almost as if he is suggesting thats a possibility. Is there a strategy here, a weird signal thats being sent by trump friends to motorcycle about what he should or shouldnt do . You know, again, i dont know, i dont know what kind of strategy they are trying to signal there. I suppose people are trying to warn the president and others that if Michael Cohen is already cooperating to be careful in your phone conversations with him. At this stage, when the investigation is over and Everybody Knows that Michael Cohen is under investigation i would imagine anybody with a little bit of savvy would avoid having phone conversations with him or talking about anything of significance. I suppose its not out of the well. Of possibility he could be wearing a wire or recording conversations. Perhaps those statements are intended to warn President Trump and others who might be communicated with Michael Cohen. Interesting that in the court cases in manhattan President Trump has had his own attorney representing his own interests, not Michael Cohen but a separate attorney representing himself. Thats not typical in the kind of case that we are seeing . No, its very unusual. I mean the idea that an office of a lawyer has been searched is in itself somewhat unusual. But it would usually be the lawyers lawyer who would be the one advocating on behalf of of the protection and the one withstanding to protect the interests of his client. Very interesting that President Trump has his own lawyer there and the judge permitted that lawyer to speak on behalf of ump President Trump. This situation is slightly unusual. President trump appears to be the only real klein of Michael Cohen. Maybe thats why she has given him that extraordinary standing but it suggests that President Trump has a strong interest in protecting this information which makes me wonder whats there. It must be something that is very important to him to protect the confidentiality. Trying to protect information with regarding these woman cant be it. I dont know if thats it. But it seems he has a strong interest in protecting whatever it is that was in Michael Cohens office. He has been his client for many years, not only is he purportedly associated with the hush money deals, but real estate deals in russia. There is potentially a lot of information there. There is purportedly a recording of telephone conversations. I dont know what it is, but President Trump is signaling he cares about protecting the confidentiality of the contents of Michael Cohens office. Barbara, thank you for joining us. Breaking news now. Nbc news learned the Justice Department seefrd a referral recommending a criminal charge against Andrew Mccabe for lying to federal investigators. Pete williams has been reading up on this. He joins me with more. Pete, give us some context into this and what it means. It turns out that this referral was actually sent in january. That was about the time that Andrew Mccabe was relieved of the job of Deputy Director of the fbi by the new director, christopher ray, who brought in his own team and then just as Andrew Mccabe was about to retire last month, 36 hours before he was to retire he was fired by attorney general Jeff Sessions who was acting on a referral from the fbi and career Justice Department people that he should be fired. That was followed by a report last friday by the Inspector General what said i misled investigators from the fbi and the Inspector Generals office about passing on information to a newspaper reporter and then lied whether he was the source of that information. What we have learned now is that several months ago its been several months now in a the Justice Department has been considering this referral. Whats a referral . The Inspector General has no independent prosecutorial power. All they can do is find facts. They recommend they refer the case to the Justice Deputy and say you ought to look into this. Referrals come from a variety of source. They can come from people picking up the phone, members of congress, other government agencies. So this doesnt mean that hes going to be charged. It only means that the Justice Deputy is looking into it. The i. G. Report that we saw last friday was quite strong about mccabe, saying that he intentionally lied. His lawyer, though, has said number one he had the authority as the Deputy Director to authorize disclosing this information to the reporter, that he never misled the investigators, and that when there was some ambiguous, he came back and corrected the record. So they say that he was wrongly accused of lying in the i. G. Report. Thank pete. We will stay on top of this story with you. Nbc news justice correspondent pete williams. The same week that the president said he was looking forward to meeting with north Korean Leader kim jongun last night he floated the idea he could still walk away from the talks even once he is in them if he doesnt think they can be fruitful. This comes as concerns rise over his strategy going into such a high stakes meeting. Joining me is jane harmon, former nineterm democratic congresswoman from kpafl who was a member of the Permanent Select Committee on intelligence who visited pyongyang 20 years ago on an Intelligence Committee visit. Jane, great to see you here in person. And a friend of yours. A friend of mine. Thank you for being here. This is complicated. Yeah. You coauthored an op ed in the washington post. And you said this was in september of 2016 the United States has an underappreciated ace in its deck. North korea has been trying to talk to us since 1974. Only the United States, the supposed existential threat that justifies its nuclear and blis Ballistic Missile program can fully address pyongyangs security concerns. To do so, we had have to demonstrate some flexibility. I fear the president might have read this op ed because he is talking about demonstrating some flexibility. Uhhuh. Well, you know what surprises me about that is it was President Trump who said, about this, and other Foreign Policy things that i dont want to telegraph my intentions. I dont know why he is talking about this at all. He had a very able guy, mike pompeo, mind you, go over there and check out the landscape. And obviously get an intelligence reading. He is the most senior official who has met kim jongun. Certainly the only u. S. Officials that i am aware of who has met him. So why dont they just quietly discuss how to do this instead of make threats before the meeting wherever the meeting may be . Its going to be very complicated. Because we have to understand what kim jongun wants. And what does he want . Yes, he sees us as an existential threat because he thinks we have the capacity to cake out his regime. Regime survival is number one. It is a 70yearold regime. Easy the grandson. There is a, into on him about human rights abuses. So he has a very tricky line to walk. Yep. If his people in his own country learned more about their own situation what would they do. Which they wont because they have no access to a real internet. But if we get to a point where there is socalled denuclearization, where the u. S. Is asked to reduce its forces along the dmz, the demille terry ayed zone. That could happen anyway as a result of north south conversation later this month. And there is normalization, that is to some extent north korea enters civilization they may find out that stuff. Thats going to be hart hard for him. What we have learned from the japanese Prime Minister being at maralago is that he expressed concern to President Trump that what the japanese want out of it and what the South Koreans want out of it is different than what the United States wants. The United States want to not have nuclear tipped intercontinental Ballistic Missiles that can hit the United States. Japan and south korea, you can him them without enter continental missiles. You can hit japan and seoul with regular weaponry. They are vulnerable. We and our allies together plus china need to be involved in whatever the solution is. For sure. Our allies are worried that we hope that President Trump doesnt in the hopes of getting something that looks like a success cut a deal thats short of what everybody needs. I get that. And dont assume that china and north korea are best buds either. There have been tensions in that relationship forever. They dont want an imploded north korea you about they also dont want Nuclear Weapons focused on them. Getting everybody in the tent together on the same page the way we were able to do with the iran agreement would be a good start. And p. S. President trump, please dont deauthorize the iran agreement. To do that on the eve of trying to get a deal with north korea i mean, this is you know, kim jongun, we blow up agreements we make, that would not be the best opening tactic in a negotiation. Thats one warning. Be careful about the iran agreement as you are about to make another nuclear sort of agreement. The other warning needs to be we seem to be getting into trade spats, some necessary, some not with the three people we need in the region, china, south korea, and japan. Yeah. I mean, we are out of tpp. Then we might get into tpp. Now we are out of tpp again, the transpacific partnership. That to me, and to many other observers would have been our best buffer, by the way, against china asserting its economic might, which it is now doing. And it also would have been in a National Security sense good protection for us, keep us all close in the neighborhood. We are not there. Thats a problem. The other thing to think about is north korea is going to be a very hard place to inspect. Iran is hard enough. Lets imagine, north korea has a very well developed nuclear capability. It doesnt have reentry capacity but it has everything else. It probably has deep tunnels its under population centers. So knowing whats there will be hard. Right. Especially if we take down our presence or reduce our presence along the demilitarized zone. In iran, there were enough spies that we could figure that out. But buchgers are hard to figure out. We had never met kim jongun until he was leader. But you are still optimistic that something could go the right way. Talking is better than bombing. We are at least trying that. Jane harmon is the director and rest of the Woodrow Wilson senator. Haed hide camp announced she will vote yes for mike pompeo to serve as secretary of state. This is great news for pompeo, who is counting every vote right now. We are going to bring you up to speed on what this means and whether he has enough votes yet. Coming up the u. S. Is hoping to reach a deal with canada and mexico on nafta in the next three weeks. But it depends largely how they are willing to deal with our president. Later we will hear from the two men arrested in the philadelphia starbucks. The video of that went viral. We will show you that when we come back. You are matching msnbc live. Captivating exteriors dynamic lighting elevated comfort powerfully efficient and one more thing the world comes with it you can go your own way. The 2019 Jeep Cherokee he gets the best deal on the Perfect Hotel by using. 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