'As bad as it gets': Morning Joe panel predicts 'no happy ending for Donald Trump'

A veteran campaign operative has been questioned multiple times by special counsel Jack Smith's team in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, and MSNBC's Joe Scarborough said the former president's situation has gone from bad to worse.

Senior campaign official Susie Wiles was allegedly shown a classified map by Trump at his Bedminster golf club after he left office, according to a source familiar with the matter, and former White House director of communications Jennifer Palmieri told "Morning Joe" that was a significant development.

"You know, I think we're surprised when we see her name because you really, it brings home how exposed Trump is," Palmieri said. "It's not that surprising that Susie Wiles is somebody that the Justice Department is talking to, but then it makes you appreciate, oh, right, if they're talking to Susie Wiles, they're talking to everyone around him."

"She's a serious person who is not going to take a bullet for Donald Trump," Palmieri said. "She's going to do the right thing here with the Justice Department. Then also, if she was exposed to classified information, and apparently her firm has ties with China, who else saw classified information that might be relevant to people they lobby for or may, in fact, be foreign nationals themselves? You can imagine in the course of the trial how the Justice Department, the prosecutors will start laying this out to show how Trump put us and our national security at risk. When you see the details, it clicks in, oh, right, they could really show the damage that he did not in the abstract, showing them, but how it could have exposed us beyond that circle."

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Trump has insisted that he was handling building plans, and not sensitive military documents, when he was recorded showing off printed materials to aides and associates at Bedminster, but Scarborough said that's preposterous.

"You listen to the explanations he gives in interviews about what he was doing, when it was evident by listening that he was showing these documents, and you understand that he knows he's cornered," Scarborough said. "If people want to go to jail for a decade, Susie Wiles, if she wants to lie, she can go to jail. The people who talked, and we've said this from the beginning, whether it's Jack Smith or whether it's the Jan. 6 committee, they're all Trumpers, they're all people that are around him, they're all people that have worked for him. If he lies, he will lie, and his defense attorneys know, he just lies, he's going to get himself in even more trouble."

"The legal experts I've talked to over the past week who've at times been a bit skeptical it would end badly for Donald Trump all pointed to the tape that came up last week and said, 'Yeah, this is about as bad as it gets,'" he added. "They just, they don't see a happy ending for Donald Trump in this battle with Jack Smith."

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