Trump lawyers 'pretty much resigned' to charges in Mar-a-Lago case: reporter

Donald Trump's lawyers are preparing for his indictment by special counsel Jack Smith, who has nearly wrapped up his investigation of the former president's handling of classified documents.

Investigators have nearly finished obtaining testimony from nearly every employee at Mar-a-Lago, some of them in multiple rounds of testimony, and some of the ex-president's attorneys and associates believe he will likely be charged with crimes related to his retention of classified materials, Wall Street Journal reporter Aruna Viswanatha told MSNBC's "Morning Joe."

"We're in unprecedented territory, as other people have pointed out, but the way a special counsel normally works, the special counsel makes a recommendation to the attorney general, the attorney general ultimately accepts it or if he decides it's not warranted he can overturn that and then report that he's overturning it to Congress," Viswanatha said. "But in terms of how we would see it announced, if he were to decide to bring charges we would see the grand jury returning an indictment and then that would get unsealed."

The reporter has spoken to sources in Trump's inner circle, and she said they're bracing for a second indictment after the former president's fraud charges in Manhattan.

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"Some of his attorneys do firmly believe that there's no case here and they don't believe a case is going to be forthcoming, but others are pretty much resigned to there being a potential case," Viswanatha said. "But, you know, the reactions are somewhat mixed. I mean, with the Manhattan D.A. case, obviously, we saw he got a political boost from that and he was able to fundraise off of that and they potentially see a pretty similar dynamic playing out here, so that might not necessarily be a terrible thing for them, especially when they can kind of compare it to President [Joe] Biden possibly possibly having classified documents down at his residence, so it seems like they're bracing for it but not necessarily super concerned."

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