The Washington Post - 28.08.2019

BY JONATHAN O’CONNELL

AND DAVID A. FAHRENTHOLD

U.S. Attorney General William

P. Barr is planning a holiday treat

for his boss.

Last month, Barr booked Pres-

ident Trump’s D.C. hotel for a

200-person party in December

that is likely to deliver Trump’s

business more than $30,000 in

revenue.

Barr signed a contract, a copy

of which was obtained by The

Washington Post, for a “Family

Holiday Party” in the hotel’s

Presidential Ballroom on Dec. 8.

The party will feature a buffet

and a four-hour open bar for

about 200 people.

Barr is paying for the event

himself and chose the venue only

after other hotels, including the

Willard and the Mayflower, were

booked, according to a Justice

Department official. The official

said the purpose of Barr’s party

wasn’t to curry favor with the

president.

Barr holds the bash annually,

and it combines holiday festivi-

ties and a ceilidh, a party featur-

ing Irish or Scottish music.

“Career ethics officials were

consulted, and they determined

SEE BARR ON A

identity of the country is lost.”

That the films have survived

this long is something of a mira-

cle.

Afghan Film opened in the late

SEE FILM ON A

country,” said Sultan Moham-

mad Istalifi, 72, a longtime em-

ployee of Afghan Film, the state-

run film company, who is part of

the digitization team. “If the

archive is not preserved, the

at mobile theaters across Af-

ghanistan — even, the archivists

hope, in some of the many areas

that remain under Taliban con-

trol.

“Archives are the identity of a

BY SIOBHÁN O’GRADY

AND SHARIF HASSAN

kabul — A young woman loung-

es in a meadow, daydreaming

about her love. Her friend sings

and decorates her long hair with

freshly picked flowers. Suddenly,

she perks up to the clip-clop of an

approaching horse. “Sharif is

coming!” she cries out, jumping

up to run toward him.

In Afghanistan, movie scenes

like this one — released just

before the outbreak of civil war

in 1992 — were once an essential

part of the country’s rich culture.

Then, in the mid-1990s, the Tali-

ban banned them — destroying

some reels of film and leaving

others to decay in storage.

Now, an elite team of film

archivists here is working to

conserve them as part of a years-

long government program that

aims to digitize about a century’s

worth of Afghan documentaries

and films over the next six

months.

The project coincides with ne-

gotiations between the United

States and the Taliban, which

have raised both hopes for an

end to the 18-year war and fears

the Taliban could return to pow-

er. Once finished, some clips

from the digitized movies will be

made available to download on-

line and others will be screened

BUSINESS NEWS ............................................. A
CLASSIFIEDS..................................................... D
COMICS ............................................................. C

JOHN KELLY’S WASHINGTON ............................ B

OPINION PAGES................................................A

LOTTERIES.........................................................B

OBITUARIES ...................................................... B

SPORTS ............................................................. D

STOCKS ........................................................... A

STYLE ................................................................ C

TELEVISION ....................................................... C

WORLD NEWS..................................................A

CONTENT © 2019

The Washington Post / Year 142, No. 266

FOOD

Putting a twist on

the classics for

lunch EXPANDED SECTION

ON PARENTING

How to hit a reset

button on family

life SPECIAL SECTION

SCIENCE TRIP

12 destinations

for the science-

minded SPECIAL SECTION

BOOK WORLD

A guide to the

National Book

Festival SPECIAL SECTION

ABCDE

Prices may vary in areas outside metropolitan Washington. SU V1 V2 V3 V

Shower, t-storm 84/66 • Tomorrow: Mostly sunny 83/64 B8 Democracy Dies in Darkness WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 28 , 2019. $3.

special expanded EDITION

BY NICK MIROFF

AND JOSH DAWSEY

President Trump is so eager to

complete hundreds of miles of

border fence ahead of the 2020

presidential election that he has

directed aides to fast-track bil-

lions of dollars’ worth of construc-

tion contracts, aggressively seize

private land and disregard envi-

ronmental rules, according to cur-

rent and former officials involved

with the project.

He also has told worried subor-

dinates that he will pardon them

of any potential wrongdoing

should they have to break laws to

get the barriers built quickly,

those officials said.

Trump has repeatedly prom-

ised to complete 500 miles of

fencing by the time voters go to

the polls in November 2020, stir-

ring chants of “Finish the Wall!” at

his political rallies as he pushes

for tighter border controls. But

the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

has completed just about 60 miles

of “replacement” barrier during

the first 2½ years of Trump’s pres-

idency, all of it in areas that previ-

ously had border infrastructure.

The president has told senior

aides that a failure to deliver on

the signature promise of his 2016

campaign would be a letdown to

his supporters and an embarrass-

ing defeat. With the election 14

months away and hundreds of

miles of fencing plans still in blue-

print form, Trump has held regu-

lar White House meetings for

progress updates and to hasten

the pace, according to several peo-

ple involved in the discussions.

When aides have suggested

that some orders are illegal or

unworkable, Trump has suggest-

ed he would pardon the officials if

they would just go ahead, aides

said. He has waved off worries

about contracting procedures and

the use of eminent domain, saying

“take the land,” according to offi-

cials who attended the meetings.

“Don’t worry, I’ll pardon you,”

he has told officials in meetings

about the wall.

“He said people expected him

to build a wall, and it had to be

done by the election,” one former

official said.

Asked for comment, a White

House official, who spoke on the

condition of anonymity, said

Trump is joking when he makes

such statements about pardons.

Deputy White House press sec-

retary Hogan Gidley said Tuesday

SEE WALL ON A

BY RENAE MERLE

AND MATT ZAPOTOSKY

new york — One by one, the
women stood in court, fighting
back tears as they described how
Jeffrey Epstein coerced and
abused them, and — to the end —
avoided efforts to bring him to
justice.
The women would have pre-
ferred a trial. But because Ep-
stein, a politically connected mul-
timillionaire, killed himself in
federal custody this month, au-
thorities said, they got only this: a
three-hour hearing, convened os-
tensibly so a judge could weigh
prosecutors’ request to drop the
sex-trafficking charges brought
against the jet-setting financier.
For those who say he abused
them, there will be no final face-
to-face confrontation. For Ep-
stein, there will be no evaluation
of the evidence by his peers.
There will be continued civil
litigation. At least six of those who
say they were victimized by Ep-
stein have joined lawsuits against
his estate, and representatives for
others say they plan to make simi-
lar efforts, although the scope is
unclear. Prosecutors also sought
to assure the women that the
investigation into those who
might have aided Epstein would
continue.
But Judge Richard M. Berman
said at the outset the obvious yet
painful truth: “Mr. Epstein’s
death obviously means that a trial
in which he is a defendant cannot
take place.” Instead, Berman cre-
ated a venue for the women to
share their stories with each other
and the world — some publicly for
the first time, others retelling the
now familiar horrors they en-
dured in hopes of some bit of
catharsis.
SEE EPSTEIN ON A

BY JULIET EILPERIN

AND JOSH DAWSEY

President Trump has instruct-

ed Agriculture Secretary Sonny

Perdue to exempt Alaska’s 16.7-

million-acre Tongass National

Forest from logging restrictions

imposed nearly 20 years ago, ac-

cording to three people briefed on

the issue, after privately discuss-

ing the matter with the state’s

governor aboard Air Force One.

The move would affect more

than half of the world’s largest

intact temperate rainforest, open-

ing it to potential logging, energy

and mining projects. It would un-

dercut a sweeping Clinton admin-

istration policy known as the

“roadless rule,” which has sur-

vived a decades-long legal assault.

Trump has taken a personal

interest in “forest management,” a

term he told a group of lawmakers

last year he has “redefined” since

taking office.

Politicians have tussled for

years over the fate of the Tongass,

a massive stretch of southeastern

Alaska replete with old-growth

spruce, hemlock and cedar, rivers

running with salmon, and dra-

matic fjords. President Bill Clin-

ton put more than half of it off

limits to logging just days before

leaving office in 2001, when he

barred the construction of roads

in 58.5 million acres of undevel-

oped national forest across the

country. President George W.

Bush sought to reverse that policy,

holding a handful of timber sales

in the Tongass before a federal

SEE LOGGING ON A

Trump

to boost

Alaska

logging

Robbed of

justice, but

not of their

voices

No barrier too high in pursuit of wall

Barr books

president’s

D.C. hotel for

holiday party

Keeping silver-screen dreams alive

The Taliban decimated Afghanistan’s film industry. Archivists hope to conserve what’s left.

KIANA HAYERI FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

For Nazifa Hashimi, 58, watching Afghan films like the one above can evoke painful memories of a time

before the nation’s civil war. She is part of an effort to preserve Afghanistan’s cinematic history.

PUSHES FOR ROADS

IN RAINFOREST

State leaders, developers

have decried 2001 limits

Epstein accusers in court

urge pursuit of enablers

CAROLYN VAN HOUTEN/THE WASHINGTON POST

In Calexico, Calif., a piece of border fence, right, was painted black to absorb heat, something President Trump hopes will deter climbers.

He has urged aides to fast-track contracts and take other steps to push the wall along, even saying he will grant pardons if laws are broken.

Trump pushing to finish

hundreds of miles of

border fence by election

New border pact

U.S. and Panama work together

to vet migrants on the move. A

BY LENNY BERNSTEIN

AND SCOTT HIGHAM

Drugmaker Purdue Pharma is
negotiating a multibillion-dollar
settlement with lawyers for local
and state governments that would
resolve about 2,000 lawsuits
against the company, which would
declare bankruptcy as part of the
deal.
The Sackler family, which owns
the company, would relinquish
control and contribute at least
$3 billion in personal funds to the
settlement, which could total as
much as $12 billion, according to
three people familiar with the
talks, who spoke on the condition
of anonymity because they were
not authorized to discuss the ne-
gotiations.
Leaders of the 2,000 plaintiffs
in a consolidated lawsuit pending
in federal court are seriously con-
sidering the offer, according to one
person with knowledge of the ne-
gotiations. Another person famil-
iar with the discussions said: “I
think this is a last effort. If they
don’t take this deal, [Purdue is]
going to bankruptcy very quickly.”
The proposed deal, first report-
ed Tuesday by NBC News, has been
in the works for months, accord-
SEE OPIOIDS ON A

Purdue in

talks to settle

opioid suits

for billions