Papa Pope Is At It Again On 'Scandal'

The presidential race is heating up on Scandal just as it's heating up in real life. And of course, it wouldn't be a storyline on this show if Papa Pope wasn't involved, pulling the strings to make something scary happen, right? Don't worry — he definitely has some skin in this game, and it's coming from a surprising source: Jake's new fiancée, Vanessa. On this week's Scandal, Olivia discovers Jake's stealing funds from Vanessa's bank account to fund a Super PAC for their candidate of choice, Edison Davis.

Yes, that Edison Davis — the one Olivia almost married. He's back, and he's running for president, and for whatever reason, it's really important to Olivia's father that he win. But that's not the issue at hand. The first problem is that Jake got Vanessa's bank account information as part of an NSA screening before they could date — a tidbit that Quinn learned when she went out to lunch with her, pretending to be one of her old college classmates. That's not part of the NSA's traditional background checks, so it became glaringly obvious that Jake's using that information to siphon money out of Vanessa's bank account to fund Edison's Super PAC. And when Olivia found out, she was pissed.

Her first move was to go straight to Edison to warn him against taking money from her dad, but unfortunately, she was too late. Her father had already gotten to him, and somehow convinced him that Olivia is the bad guy. Oh, OK, "Eli" Pope, if that's your real name (no seriously, is it?). Next up: Confronting Jake, and warning him that she knows exactly what she's up to — with a make out session, of course, because that's how these things work with them.

I have a bad feeling that Papa Pope is about to attempt to gain control of the Oval Office via Edison, but he's going to regret it, because Olivia is playing hardball. She wasted no time filling Senator Vargas' brother in on Edison's stint in rehab... so now he has dirt on his opponent.

It's going to be a long presidential race, y'all.

Images: Ron Batzdorff/ABC, Giphy