A former aide to President Donald Trump urged him to dump the Jeffrey Epstein scandal into Attorney General Pam Bondi's lap and position her as a possible scapegoat.
The attorney general ignited a MAGA firestorm by unceremoniously declaring the disgraced financier had killed himself and had not kept a "client list," which contradicted conspiracy theories embraced by Trump's supporters.
On Wednesday, former White House aide Alyssa Farah Griffin told "CNN News Central" the resulting blowback was Bondi's fault.
"I remain stunned by how bad the PR around this Epstein issue has been,' Griffin said. "I sort of think that the president may have been caught flat-footed on how big of an issue this was to his base, and Donald Trump is rarely not in lockstep with where his base is on issues.
"But, listen, this is now a weeks-long story. The White House first needs to punt this to DOJ, say we're not talking about it any further. This is fully DOJ's purview, and DOJ needs to get out there and they need to unite around, what is the narrative? Is there anything else that could be released? It's almost certain that there's grand jury testimony, there's victim testimony, things that can be redacted but released to the public that might assuage some of this just skepticism that there is nothing else there."
"But if I'm the White House, I'm distancing myself," Griffin added. "I'm making it a DOJ problem, and you've got to give Pam Bondi a little bit of time to say, you got to figure this out or we're moving in a different direction."
The president was asked directly if Bondi had told him his name had appeared in the case file, and he said no and then claimed improbably that Barack Obama and James Comey had "made up" the documents, and Griffin laughed when asked if that indicated he was distancing himself from the attorney general.
"It didn't make any sense," she said, laughing, "and his base won't buy that. This is something that is so animating, it is so deeply felt by his base. They feel like it is one of the most evil acts that could be committed, and they want accountability. That's not going to pass."
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