Pardon Me: President Trump is already making legal inquiries about his power to pardon aides, family members, and even himself in connection with the Russia investigation, according to both The Washington Post and NY Times.

At the same time, the Post reports, Trump’s legal team is looking for ways to block or impede the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The special counsel has broad authority to follow where the investigation takes him. The President is reported to be enraged by the thought that the investigation could delve into his personal finances, as well as his family’s.

Mueller is already looking at real estate deals and has asked Deutsche

Bank for records involving Trump.

The Trump team is suggesting that Mueller and his investigators have conflicts of interest and saying outright that they better not get too aggressive. “The president’s making clear that the special counsel should not move outside the scope of the investigation,” spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said during yesterday’s briefing.

Interestingly, the spokesman for Trump’s legal team, Mark Corallo, resigned yesterday.

Recuse Me: Attorney Gen. Jeff Sessions said yesterday that he’ll stay on the job despite being grossly insulted by President Trump in an interview with the NY Times.

Sessions said he would stay “as long as that is appropriate.” Sessions said at a press conference about busting an internet drug operation that, “I am totally confident that we can continue to run this office in an effective way.”

Trump told the Times he would never have appointed Sessions if he had known the former senator would recuse himself from the investigation into Russian influence on the 2016 presidential campaign.

Then and Now: The federal government yesterday fined ExxonMobil $2 million for “reckless disregard” of American economic sanctions in doing business with Russia while Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was the CEO of the company.

The fine stemmed from deals Exxon signed with the Russian oil producer Rosneft weeks after Washington imposed sanctions on Moscow for annexing Crimea.

Exxon had opposed the sanctions and Tillerson gave a dodgy answer in his confirmation hearing, saying, “I have never lobbied against sanctions personally.” He didn’t. He paid professional lobbyists to do it.

Now part of his job is enforcing sanctions.

Broken Field Runner: Former football great OJ Simpson was granted parole yesterday from a Nevada prison where he has served nine years for armed robbery.

Simpson has been a model prisoner, but despite having physically abused and possibly murdered his ex-wife Nicole, he told the parole board he had led a “conflict-free life.”

Simpson, who’s 70 now, gets out of the pen in October, but where he will go and what he will do is to be determined. Nevada law says a parolee needs permission to move, can’t drink alcohol or carry a weapon, and must have a job. Parolees also can’t associate with convicted criminals, which might eliminate returning to Florida.

Big Game: An Alabama man used a pistol to kill an 820-pound wild boar on his 100-acre property. With their sharp tusks, boars can be deadly. Wade Seago said, “I didn’t really have time to think about it. I was confronted by an animal threatening my dog that looked like something out of a horror film.” — A lion named Xanda, who was the son of the famous Cecil the Lion killed by an American dentist, was himself killed by a trophy hunter in Zimbabwe. Xanda fathered several cubs. Trophy hunters claim they are actually conservationists because the fees they pay to kill wild animals support game preserves.

The Obit Page: Chester Bennington, the lead singer for the alternative rock group Linkin Park, died at age 41, an apparent suicide.

Bennington had been a big drinker and druggie, who tried to get straight. He once told an interviewer, “I knew that I had a drinking problem, a drug problem and that parts of my personal life were crazy but I didn’t realize how much that was affecting the people around me until I got a good dose of ‘Here’s-what-you’re-really-like.’ It was a shock.”

Linkin Park, with its roots in heavy metal mixed with hip hop and electronic music, was one of the most successful bands of the early 2000s.

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