The US presidential election is heating up in the next episode of "Scandal" season 5.

In the previous episode, Mellie Grant (Bellamy Young), Hollis Doyle (Gregg Henry) and Susan Ross (Artemis Pebdani) embarked in their first presidential debate.

While the presidential candidates were throwing shades against each other, Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) did what she does best by working with her Gladiators dig some dirt against Susan. That is how they found out that the current Vice President of the United States was never actually married to her late husband. They also learned that the biological father of her daughter Casey is actually a man named Ronnie, who was imprisoned due to drug-related crimes.

Olivia urged Ronnie to come out and expose Susan's secret in public. However, Ronnie opted to hang himself to death before his scheduled interview on national TV. This incident deeply affected Olivia, prompting her to stop implementing dirty campaign tactics.

However, not everyone will fight fair and square during the upcoming elections, since another scandal is expected to explode in the upcoming episode.

The synopsis for the episode titled "Thwack!" revealed that the presidential candidates and their teams will exert their full efforts as the campaign period intensifies.

But their efforts could possibly go in vain when a "potential leak" threatens to bring them down. This will force all the candidates to work with each other to make sure that the classified information that could hurt their bid to presidency suddenly leak to the public.

The official synopsis for the episode reads:

"The election is in full swing, which means everyone is doing their best to take down their opponents, but when a potential leak threatens several candidates, they have to work together to keep their secrets safe. Boundaries are pushed and lines are crossed as we find out just how far some people are willing to go to protect themselves."

"Scandal" season 5 episode 17 airs on Thursday, April 7, on ABC.