The Jeffrey Epstein scandal has hovered like a dark cloud over the first year of Donald Trump's second presidency, and a Republican strategist released a forecast on where the political fallout would land.
The president's longtime association with the late sex offender has periodically exploded into the foreground after backtracking on campaign promises to release investigative files about Epstein's trafficking network, and GOP strategist Malik Abdul told "CNN News Central" that Trump was largely to blame for the scandal's durability.
"They got the messaging all wrong," Abdul said. "You can't deny, deny, deny, and because Donald Trump surrounded himself with people like [FBI Deputy Director] Dan Bongino, who built a cult following on the Epstein files, well, they're now a part of his administration, and so you can't that same energy that people had as far as releasing the information, even though Democrats didn't do anything on it when [Joe] Biden was in office, the energy behind it is still there, and I think, do believe that in that sense it was a miscalculation."
However, Abdul doubts the scandal will be an issue during the midterm election cycle, even thought the Department of Justice has not complied with a law passed last month compelling the release of all the Epstein files.
"I don't think that it will be a factor going into next year and especially the midterms," he said, "because I am convinced that if there were any evidence that Donald Trump was complicit in any sort of crime and not just a crime, even knowledge of a crime, we would already know that by this point. So I think by this time next year, I think that we will, of course, we would have had the midterm elections. But I think that by this time next year it won't be an issue. The economy and what the administration's message is on the economy will be the issue next year, for sure."
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