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Democracy Dies in Darkness

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FRIDAY, JULY 21 , 2017

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Trump exploring pardoning powers LAWYERS SAID TO EYE WAYS TO LIMIT PROBE Focus is on alleging Mueller conflicts in Russia case C AROL D . L EONNIG, A SHLEY P ARKER, R OSALIND S . H ELDERMAN AND T OM H AMBURGER BY

JASON BEAN/RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL VIA EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY

Bruce Fromong, left, testifies in support of the release of O.J. Simpson, who is in prison for kidnapping and armed robbery.

Simpson granted parole, will be released in fall BY

D AN Z AK

O.J. Simpson will soon be a free man. Again. A four-member parole board in Carson City, Nev., voted unanimously Thursday to curtail his 33-year prison sentence for kidnapping and armed robbery, stemming from a confrontation over sports

2 Cabinet members in Exxon legal ﬁght BY D AMIAN P ALETTA AND C AROL M ORELLO

Two of President Trump’s most prominent Cabinet members became embroiled Thursday in an unusual legal battle over whether ExxonMobil under Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s leadership violated U.S. sanctions against Russia. Treasury officials fined ExxonMobil $2 million Thursday morning for signing eight business agreements in 2014 with Igor Sechin, the chief executive of Rosneft, an energy giant partially owned by the Russian government. The business agreements came less than a month after the United States banned companies from doing business with him. Hours after the fine was announced, Exxon filed a legal complaint against the Treasury Department naming Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin as the lead defendant — while calling the actions “unlawful” and “fundamentally unfair.” EXXON CONTINUED ON A18

Obama regulations get the ax The White House outlines a plan to jettison hundreds of rules. A17

Former football star has been in prison since 2008 memorabilia in Las Vegas in 2007. The football legend, now 70 years old, could be released as soon as Oct. 1 into a world that’s still fascinated by his plummet

from grace. As the proceedings got underway, a smiling Simpson entered the hearing room at the Lovelock Correctional Center dressed in a light blue shirt with

billowy sleeves, his hair splotched with white, his voice gravelly. Seated at a desk with his attorney, Simpson was by turns affable and testy, humbled and defiant. “I always thought I’ve been pretty good with people,” Simpson told the board by video link, SIMPSON CONTINUED ON A4

Six months in, some agencies are faring better Since Donald Trump took office, much of the public’s attention has focused on his struggles with Congress and alleged ties between his campaign and Russia. But the president has managed over his first six months to gain control of large parts of the federal government. In some agencies, his deputies are taking aim at “job-killing regulations,” moving to streamline the

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson

Energy Secretary Rick Perry

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke

federal workforce and limit immigration, and advancing his “America first” energy strategy. In other agencies, however, there’s quite literally nobody home: Trump has managed to fill only 48 of 564 key positions requiring Senate confirmation, and some corners of the government are paralyzed by the absence of leadership. For a look at three departments that are faring very differently under Trump, see Pages A12-13.

Some of President Trump’s lawyers are exploring ways to limit or undercut special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation, building a case against what they allege are his conflicts of interest and discussing the president’s authority to grant pardons, according to people familiar with the effort. Trump has asked his advisers about his power to pardon aides, family members and even himself in connection with the probe, according to one of those people. A second person said Trump’s lawyers have been discussing the president’s pardoning powers among themselves. Trump’s legal team declined to comment on the issue. But one adviser said the president has

simply expressed a curiosity in understanding the reach of his pardoning authority, as well as the limits of Mueller’s investigation. “This is not in the context of, ‘I can’t wait to pardon myself,’ ” a close adviser said. With the Russia investigation continuing to widen, Trump’s lawyers are working to corral the probe and question the propriety of the special counsel’s work. They are actively compiling a list of Mueller’s alleged potential conflicts of interest, which they say could serve as a way to stymie his work, according to several of Trump’s legal advisers. A conflict of interest is one of the possible grounds that can be cited by an attorney general to remove a special counsel from office under Justice Department regulations that set rules for the job. TRUMP CONTINUED ON A11

Sessions plans to stay, despite Trump’s remark But attorney general’s expression of confidence masks private tensions R OBERT C OSTA, S ARI H ORWITZ AND M ATT Z APOTOSKY BY

Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Thursday that he plans to stay in his job despite comments from President Trump that he would not have nominated Sessions to the post had he known that he would recuse himself from the investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign. Sessions said that he has had

the “honor of serving as attorney general” and that he plans “to continue to do so as long as that is appropriate.” Asked whether he could keep running the Justice Department given Trump’s comments, he responded: “I’m totally confident that we can continue to run this office in an effective way.” But Sessions’s public expression of confidence masked deeper private tensions regarding his position in the administration and his rapport with a president who once turned to him as a confidant and policy guide. Since his decision to recuse himself from the Russia investigaSESSIONS CONTINUED ON A10

Trump and loyalty Fidelity to the president may not trickle back down. Debrief, A10

A 10-year-old’s mysterious and fatal encounter with opioids BY

K EVIN S ULLIVAN IN MIAMI

hen 10-year-old Alton Banks left the community swimming pool on the last day of his life, he walked past the elementary school where he had just finished fifth grade. He passed a cheery banner that defined a beaten-down inner-city neighborhood trying to will itself into up-and-comingness: “Experience Overtown. Eat, Live, Work, Play.” He walked past a fancy new apartment building under construction, then a long row of ragged homes and chickens clucking freely on sidewalks littered with crushed tall-boy beer cans in brown paper bags.

He arrived home on that hot afternoon, June 23, and climbed the concrete steps to his secondfloor apartment across from the homeless people crowded under a highway overpass. He started vomiting. His mother called an ambulance. And that evening he was dead, killed by a combination of heroin and fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid. And no one yet has the slightest clue how the opioid crisis that has battered the nation with such ferocity ended up taking a happy, skinny little boy a month shy of his 11th birthday. “We really don’t understand how this could possibly have happened,” said Patricia Ares-

Crisis in Venezuela An anti-government strike paralyzed large sections of the country ahead of a vote on constitutional changes. A15

THE NATION

Federal prosecutors asked a judge to ban protesters from Kentucky’s last abortion clinic. A2 Most female homicide victims are killed by husbands or other intimate partners, a report said. A3

SCOTT MCINTYRE FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

MIAMI CONTINUED ON A4

IN THE NEWS Alzheimer’s report Lifestyle modification through controllable factors such as diet, exercise and education could reduce dementia cases by one-third, researchers said. A6

This cross marks the place in Overtown, a neighborhood in Miami, where Kyle Dodds, 24, died last year. His mother, Cindy Dodds, said he snorted a mixture of cocaine, heroin, fentanyl and carfentanil. “There’s not a day down in that neighborhood where there’s not something bad going on,” she said.

Senate GOP leaders’ efforts to salvage a healthcare bill foundered as they struggled to explain what members would be voting on next week. A11 THE WORLD

Cecil the lion’s son met the same fate in a trophy

hunt in Zimbabwe. A16 Tensions increased over metal detectors at al-Aqsa Mosque. A16 THE ECONOMY

Top executives at the nation’s largest companies made $15.6 million on average last year. A18 THE REGION

Two of the six Burundi-

an teens who went missing from an international robotics competition are in Canada, D.C. police said, and the others are believed to be safe. B1 OBITUARIES

Chester Bennington’s screeching vocals helped Linkin Park become one of the most successful acts in the 2000s. B5

WEEKEND

Summer of love Ten D.C. date ideas, for couples at any stage, that foster real connection.

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