President Donald Trump may be counting on convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein's top accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, to bail him out of one of the worst scandal of his political career, according to New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman. But she's not so sure his gambit will work.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche — who was Trump's former criminal defense attorney in New York — has been conducting interviews with Maxwell from the prison where she's currently incarcerated. The Daily Beast reported Friday that Maxwell gave up approximately 100 names of Epstein associates during her interviews with Blanche, and her attorney has openly hoped that Trump will pardon his client or commute her 20-year sentence for trafficking children.

During a Friday interview with CNN host Kaitlan Collins, Haberman hinted that some of her sources close to the White House gave her knowledge of the "theory" guiding the administration's latest attempt to quell the Epstein controversy. The Times journalist said that the White House and the Department of Justice (DOJ) are looking at Maxwell as a potential "escape hatch" as the fallout over Trump's handling of the Epstein issue "continues to mushroom."

READ MORE: 'Didn't hold anything back': Ghislaine Maxwell gave up '100 different people' to Trump DOJ

"Some people at DOJ ... many of them clearly really underestimated how much the base was going to care about this, how they were going to react to this," she said, noting that the MAGA base has long viewed the Epstein files as a "holy grail."

"And so then they seemed sort of surprised that a lot of people believed them and wanted to hear more," she continued. "So they are hoping that this sort of moves it away from the idea that they are not being transparent ... This is so unusual what's happening here, and what the the deputy attorney general/personal lawyer to Donald Trump is doing, that it's hard to see how this is going to hold."

Haberman noted that one "point of fascination" for her was seeing Maxwell at the correctional facility where she's serving her sentence holding "a banker's box of materials," suggesting she was handing over significant evidence in an attempt to have her sentence reduced or commuted. The Times correspondent questioned the political wisdom of Trump potentially giving Maxwell a break given the aberrant nature of her crimes.

"There she is, going in with that box into the to the jail," Haberman said, describing the image of Maxwell leaving her interview with Blanche. "I mean, would that not infuriate the MAGA base, though, if he pardons the convicted child sex trafficker? It's quite a line to walk."

READ MORE: Trump DOJ sitting on 'more than 100,000 pages' of unreleased Epstein materials: NY Times

Watch the full video of Haberman's segment below, or by clicking this link.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

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