Any Donald Trump presidency inevitably evolves into a constellation of scandals, with him at the center of a scurrilous universe, as controversies orbit near him and then away, only to return again.

Trump can't stop that. So he tries to capitalize on it, using one scandal to distract from another. The Epstein files are a humiliating mess? Let's go to war with Iran! The war with Iran became a quagmire? Let's pick a fight with the pope!

We know it. We see it. But the way the Epstein files scandal – centered on millions of documents about Trump's former pal, the dead convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein – came back into our celestial view was astounding.

First lady Melania Trump kicked this off with a bewildering April 9 brief speech from the White House, which nobody asked for or was expecting, in which she complained about "false smears" connecting her with Epstein, despite plenty of photographs that have circulated for years that show her and her husband quite cozy with the sex offender.

Former Attorney General Pam Bondi, who did more than anyone in the Trump administration to make the Epstein files a political minefield, kept the scandal's renewed momentum going by refusing to comply with a lawfully issued subpoena from the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which wanted to question her about the files.

And then acting Attorney General Todd........

© USA TODAY