'An internal scapegoat': Here's how Trump could try to 'end the scandal'

30 July

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks to the media, in the Press Briefing Room at the White House in Washington D.C., June 27, 2025. REUTERS/Ken Cedeno/File Photo/File Photo

Mother Jones Senior reporter Anna Merlan predicts Trump’s Epstein humiliation could play out in one of five ways, knowing Trump’s style of handling things.

The president could move forward with interviewing convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving 20 years for her role in helping Jeffrey Epstein sexually abuse women and girls. Maxwell’s attorney David Markus is already pushing the Supreme Court to overturn her conviction while appealing to Trump for a pardon, and Trump has refused to rule out the idea of pardoning her.

Merlan spoke with author and journalist Mike Rothschild, who believes Maxwell might actually identify new powerful people entangled in Epstein’s sex ring. She may even claim Trump never engaged in sexually inappropriate behavior.

But Rothchild said that deal comes with the pardon or the sentencing reduction of a monster, and a dishonest one at that.

“I would imagine that every Republican running for office next year is begging him not to just outright pardon Ghislaine Maxwell,” Rothschild said. “They’re going to have to spend the next year and a half trying to justify something with no justification to voters who think she’s nothing more than a convicted trafficker. He doesn’t have to run again, but they do.”

Painting Maxwell as a brave truthteller will be hard, said Merlan, considering her 2022 pre-sentencing memorandum accuses her of having “lied repeatedly about her crimes, exhibited an utter failure to accept responsibility, and demonstrated repeated disrespect for the law and the Court.”

Option 2 for Trump consists of simply declaring the story to be over, but Merlan said that’s had limited success. The New York Times,Politico, and the Washington Post all declared Trump to have successfully settled his MAGA followers last week, based upon the opinion of one source: Trump ally and former White House official Steve Bannon.

“Just because Bannon says something does not make it true,” Merlan said.

Option 3, according to Merlan, could be Trump throwing out “an internal scapegoat” to take the blame. That would most likely be Attorney General Pam Bondi, said Merlan. Republican figures like House Speaker Mike Johnson have already made clear they’re dissatisfied with Bondi’s handling of the case and Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino, has been pushing feuds with Bondi that have made news.

“If the Trump administration chose to fire Bondi and appoint someone new who declares they are investigating the whole mess from scratch, it could at least quiet the headlines for several weeks or months,” Merlan said.

Option 4, said Merland, is a large document dump to distract the public. But she added that releasing more information would expose the names of living people, “who could then be threatened by vigilantes accusing them of sex crimes; it could also breach the privacy of Epstein victims who haven’t chosen to publicly come forward.”

Plus, Merland said broader disclosures could expose Trump. Bondi has reportedly told Trump in May that his name is in the files.

Option 5, said Merlan, is the one Trump is already using: find another scandal to distract the MAGA base. Since the Epstein scandal broke, Trump officials have promised to criminally investigate former CIA director John Brennan and former FBI director James Comey. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has also accused the Obama administration of criminal conduct.

“Thus far, though, there’s very little sign that the broader MAGA base is excited—or distracted—by these announcements.”

Read the full Mother Jones article at this link.

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