Delil Souleiman: A mirror on reality (war reflected in the eyes of a child) / Audsadang Satsadee: mirror (Human Nature)

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(AFP / Delil Souleiman)

A mirror on reality: Delil Souleiman, AFP, 18 May 2017

TABQA - The first thing I do when I come home from covering the front in Syria is go to my sister’s house to play with my one-year-old nephew Jan. After bearing witness to so much misery, I feel happy being around him. But sometimes when I look at him -- smiling and laughing, well-fed, well-loved and safe -- the images of the kids I photographed in the conflict come back to haunt me. Barefoot children, covered in dust, their faces sad, putting up their hands to protect their eyes from the sandstorms. And I cringe in pain.

 

(AFP / Delil Souleiman)

Children are a mirror on reality, be it painful or happy. They alone are capable of conveying reality without trickery, or lies, or falsification. They really are a mirror that just reflects everything as it is.

 

(AFP / Delil Souleiman)

Children can’t help but be spontaneous and real, and I suppose that’s why pictures of them are more powerful, whatever the topic, whatever the place. Especially in war. After all, children are the innocents of war and through them we can show all of war’s horrors.

 

(AFP / Delil Souleiman)

 

(AFP / Delil Souleiman)

To me, children are the ones most affected by the scourge of the war in Syria. It has not only shaken their psyche and destroyed their security. But they also see how the war has affected the adults in their lives, their anxiety and suffering, and these effects will continue well into adulthood and beyond.

It’s partly for these reasons that I keep my focus on children.

 

(AFP / Delil Souleiman)

 

(AFP / Delil Souleiman)

Most of the time photographing kids is easy. But there are some who are afraid of the big lenses. To put them at ease, I give them the camera to let them take pictures of their family and friends. When I photograph them, I always let them see the pictures after and it makes them happy and they often ask me to take another. My wife helps me in this respect. She does research on the effects of war on children and we often discuss the best ways to approach the kids whom I meet in the conflict areas. We talk about this issue often; it’s one of the many things that keep us close.

 

(AFP / Delil Souleiman)

 

(AFP / Delil Souleiman)

Communicating with children makes me happier than communicating with adults, because adults can hide things, whereas children are completely spontaneous. I suppose that’s part of their magic.

 

 (AFP / Delil Souleiman)

I have photographed so much misery and pain, but I am still affected by the scenes I see through my lens. Especially the kids. Sometimes it brings tears to my eyes, especially because the misery and pain has become so common for them.

 

(AFP / Delil Souleiman)

 

(AFP / Delil Souleiman)

Sometimes when I see a picture in my viewfinder, I feel a tingle just before pressing the shutter release because I know the picture will have a big impact. I don’t have kids of my own yet and I often wonder what their fate would be like in this region, which has witnessed so many conflicts and blood. When I think about this, it always makes me anxious.

 

(AFP / Delil Souleiman)

 

(AFP / Delil Souleiman)

I think when people see pictures of children suffering in Syria, it affects them more than those of adults. Well, some of them. Those who are responsible for this war and those who benefit from it certainly don’t care one way or another. But those people who are more human, they have to be affected, because every family has children and when they compare their children to the ones in Syria they can’t help but be touched.

I remember one of my fellow journalists who came here to cover the conflict told me, “You really become affected once you become a father yourself. Only then do you begin to understand how painful it must be to see your child dying, or getting killed in an explosion, or living in a refugee camp.”

There are so many pictures that I have taken that have stayed with me. A child standing next to his mother and crying as they wait to receive aid.

 

(AFP / Delil Souleiman)

Or a naked child running through the refugee camp, barefoot, because he can’t stay too long on the soil that has become scorching because of the heat and the sun. Or another crying as his mother tells me that he hasn’t eaten in three days because her milk has dried up since she too hasn’t had enough to eat. And so many others. There is one I took recently, of a little boy, that affected me really deeply.

 

(AFP / Delil Souleiman)

Sometimes I witness things that give me hope. Like a while ago in the Ain Issa camp, when I saw a truck that had just come in from Raqa. Dust covered the faces of all those on board. And as soon as the kids got off, two of them started playing with a spinning top, a toy that was once quite popular, but that we’ve stopped seeing as the Internet and video games have spread to our corner of the world.

 

(AFP / Delil Souleiman)

But it’s harder to remember the joyful pictures, because there are so many more painful ones and the painful ones stay with you more. The images of joy and hope fade away. Even at weddings and other occasions that are supposed to be places of joy, there are guns fired to express happiness. And that forces children to be afraid even at weddings.

As Syria descends further and further into chaos, it is crushing the hopes of children, destroying their future in so many ways -- educational, social and psychological. The conflict in Syria affects life here on all levels including, for me, having children. You just don’t know what kind of a future they’ll face.

 

(AFP / Delil Souleiman)

 

Delil Souleiman is a freelance photographer based in Qamishli, Syria. This blog was written with Yana Dlugy in Paris and Amir Makar in Nicosia.

[Acadia national Park, Mount Desert Island, Maine]: photo by Patrick, July 2016

[Acadia National Park, Mount Desert Island, Maine]: photo by Patrick, July 2016

[Acadia National Park, Mount Desert Island, Maine]: photo by Patrick, July 2016

[Bangkok]: photo by Dimitris Makrygiannakis, 15 December 2016

[Bangkok]: photo by Dimitris Makrygiannakis, 15 December 2016

[Bangkok]: photo by Dimitris Makrygiannakis, 15 December 2016

Kolkata 2017: photo by Soumyendra Saha, 15 May 2017

Kolkata 2017: photo by Soumyendra Saha, 15 May 2017

Kolkata 2017: photo by Soumyendra Saha, 15 May 2017

[Untitled]: photo by Audsadang Satsadee, 15 May 2560

[Untitled]: photo by Audsadang Satsadee, 15 May 2560

[Untitled]: photo by Audsadang Satsadee, 15 May 2560

mirror: photo by Audsadang Satsadee, 14 May 2017

mirror: photo by Audsadang Satsadee, 14 May 2017

mirror: photo by Audsadang Satsadee, 14 May 2017

 
A child sleeps on his mother's shoulder after a perilous journey on foot to flee heavy fighting in Iraq. #APPhoto @mayaalleruzzo: image via AP Images @AP_Images, 18 May 2017 

Robert Fisk: Trump among the Saudi princelings: 'The only religion [he] really respects'

First Lady Melania #Trump looks so strong sitting next to Saudi leaders... no headscarf, no hijab! Rep the West! #AmericaFirst: image via John Binder @JxhnBinder, 20 May 2017

 

Donald Trump will prepare the Sunni Muslims of the Middle East, including Mohammad bin Salman, for war against the Shia Muslims: photo by AFP/Getty via The Independent, 18 May 2017

This is the aim of Donald Trump's visit to Saudi Arabia – and it isn't good for Shia communities: The Sunni Saudis and the Gulf kings possess immense wealth, the only religion that Trump really respects, and they want to destroy Shia Iran, Syria, the Hezbollah and the Houthis – which is a simple ‘anti-terrorist’ story for the Americans: Robert Fisk, The Independent, 18 May 2017

Donald Trump sets off on Friday to create the fantasy of an Arab Nato. There will be dictators aplenty to greet him in Riyadh, corrupt autocrats and thugs and torturers and head choppers. There will be at least one zombie president – the comatose, undead Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria who neither speaks nor, apparently, hears any more – and, of course, one totally insane president, Donald Trump. The aim, however, is simple: to prepare the Sunni Muslims of the Middle East for war against the Shia Muslims. With help from Israel, of course.

Even for those used to the insanity of Arab leadership – not to mention those Westerners who have still to grasp that the US President is himself completely off his rocker – the Arab-Muslim (Sunni) summit in Saudi Arabia is almost beyond comprehension. From Pakistan and Jordan and Turkey and Egypt and Morocco and 42 other minareted capitals, they are to come so that the effete and ambitious Saudis can lead their Islamic crusade against “terrorism” and Shiism. The fact that most of the Middle East’s “terrorism” – Isis and al-Qaeda, aka the Nusrah Front – have their fountainhead in the very nation to which Trump is travelling, must and will be ignored. Never before in Middle Eastern history has such a “kumidia alakhta” – quite literally “comedy of errors” in Arabic – been staged.

 
On top of all this, they have to listen to Trump’s ravings on peace and Islamic “extremism”, surely the most preposterous speech to be uttered by a US president since he is going to have to pretend that Iran is extremist – when it is Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi Isis clones who are destroying Islam’s reputation throughout the world. All this while he is fostering war.

 
For Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (henceforth MbS) wants to lead his Sunni tribes – plus Iraq if possible, which is why Shia Prime Minister Abadi has been invited from Baghdad – against the serpent of “terrorist” Shia Iran, the dark (Shia) “terrorist” Alawite regime of Bashar al-Assad, the “terrorist” Shia Lebanese Hezbollah and the aggressive “terrorist” Shia Houthis of Yemen. As for the Gulf states’ own Shia minorities and other recalcitrants, well, off with their heads.

 
After all, that’s what the Saudis did to the prominent Saudi Shia leader Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr last year: they cut his head from his body, Isis-style, in a classic bit of Wahhabi decapitation, along with 47 other “terrorists”. And any powerful Shias in neighbouring Gulf countries will be cut down, too – which is what happened to Bahrain’s Shia majority when the Saudi army moved in to occupy the island in 2011 at the “request” of its Sunni ruler.

 
And you can see why America’s disgraceful President, a man who truly falls into the regional pantheon of raving loonies – he surely ranks among the Gaddafis and Ahmadinejads of the Middle East – goes along with this. The fact that Isis – Trump’s mortal enemy and the strategic adversary of his defence chiefs – is a creature of the same Salafist cult as Saudi Arabia, is neither here nor there. The Sunni Saudis and the Gulf kings and princes possess immense wealth, the only religion that Trump really respects, and they want to destroy Shia Iran and Syria and the Hezbollah and the Houthis – which is a simple “anti-terrorist” story for the Americans – and this means that Trump can give MbS and his chums $100bn (£77bn) of US missiles, planes, ships and ammo for the war-to-come. America will be happy. And Israel will be happy.

 
I guess Crown Prince Jared Kushner thinks he can handle this end of the Arab-Nato alliance, though the Israelis themselves will be perfectly happy to watch the Sunnis and Shia fight each other, just as they did during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war when the US supported Sunni Saddam – albeit that his army was mostly Shia – and the Israelis furnished US missiles to the Shia Iranians. Already, the Israelis have distinguished themselves by bombing the Syrian army, the Hezbollah and the Iranians in the Syrian war – while leaving Isis untouched and giving medical assistance to al-Qaeda (Nusrah) on Golan.

 
Much has been made (rightly) of MbS’s threat to ensure that the battle is “in Iran and not in Saudi Arabia”. But, typically, few bothered to listen to Iran’s ferocious reply to the Saudi threat. It came promptly from the Iranian defence minister, Hossein Dehghan. “We warn them [the Saudis] against doing anything ignorant,” he said, “but if they do something ignorant, we will leave nowhere untouched apart from Mecca and Medina.” In other words, it’s time to start building air raid shelters in Riyadh, Jeddah, Dhahran, Aramco headquarters and all those other locations dear to American hearts.

 
Indeed, it’s difficult not to recall an almost identical Sunni hubris – almost four decades ago – to that of MbS today. The latter boasts of his country’s wealth and his intention to diversify, enrich and broaden its economic base. In 1980, Saddam was determined to do the same. He used Iraq’s oil wealth to cover the country in super-highways, modern technology, state-of-the-art healthcare and hospitals and modern communications. Then he kicked off his “lightning war” with Iran. It impoverished his oil-rich nation, humiliated him in the eyes of his fellow Arabs – who had to cough up the cash for his disastrous eight-year adventure – led to Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, sanctions and the ultimate Anglo-US invasion of 2003 and, for Saddam, the hangman’s noose.

 
Yet this leaves out the Syrian dimension. Sharmine Narwani, a former senior associate of St Antony’s College – and an antidote for all those sickened by the mountebank think-tank “experts” of Washington – pointed out this week that US support for Kurdish forces fighting under the dishonest label of “Syrian Democratic Forces” are, by advancing on Raqqa, helping to cut Syria off from Iraq. And that Kurdish forces are now reported as “retaking” Christian or Muslim Arab towns in the Nineveh province of Iraq, which were never Kurdish in the first place. Kurds now regard Qamishleh, and Hassakeh province in Syria as part of “Kurdistan”, although they represent a minority in many of these areas. Thus US support for these Kurdish groups – to the fury of Sultan Erdogan and the few Turkish generals still loyal to him – is helping to both divide Syria and divide Iraq.

 
This cannot and will not last. Not just because the Kurds are born to be betrayed – and will be betrayed by the Americans even if the present maniac-in-charge is impeached, just as they were betrayed to Saddam in the days of Kissinger – but because Turkey’s importance (with or without its own demented leader) will always outweigh Kurdish claims to statehood. Both are Sunnis, and therefore “safe” allies until one of them – inevitably the Kurds – must be abandoned.

 
Meanwhile, you can forget justice, civil rights, sickness and death. Cholera has quite a grip on Yemen now, courtesy of the criminal bombing attacks of the Saudis – ably assisted by their American allies long before Trump took over – and scarcely any of the Muslim leaders whom Trump meets in Riyadh do not have torturers at work back home to ensure that some of their citizens wish they had never been born. It will be a relief for the fruitcake president to leave Israel for the Vatican, albeit given only a brief visitation to – and short shrift by – a real peacemaker.

 
That only leaves one nation out of the loop of this glorious charivari: Russia. But be sure Vladimir Putin comprehends all too well what is going on in Riyadh. He will watch the Arab Nato fall apart. His foreign minister Lavrov understands Syria and Iran better than the feckless Tillerson. And his security officers are deep inside Syria. Besides, if he needs any more intelligence information, he has only to ask Trump.

Wonder if #Trump will get to see Ali in #Bethlehem this week. @GettyImages via @TheAtlantic #WestBank #firstforeigntrip #separationwall: image via Reading The Pictures @ReadingThePix, 19 May 2017

Smoke from an airstrike rises in the background as a man flees with a toddler during fighting between Iraqi special forces and Islamic State militants, in the al-Refai neighborhood of western Mosul, Iraq, Wednesday, May 17, 2017.: photo by Maya Alleruzzo/AP, 17 May 2017

Investigation launched into whether White House officials covered up Russian meddling: image via Independent US @IndyUSA, 19 May 2017

Friday: image via Abby D. Phillip @abbydphillip, , 19 May 2017

What James Comey Told Me About Donald Trump: Benjamin Wittes, Lawfare, 18 May 2017

The New York Times is reporting tonight:

President Trump called the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, weeks after he took office and asked him when federal authorities were going to put out word that Mr. Trump was not personally under investigation, according to two people briefed on the call.

Mr. Comey told the president that if he wanted to know details about the bureau’s investigations, he should not contact him directly but instead follow the proper procedures and have the White House counsel send any inquires to the Justice Department, according to those people.

After explaining to Mr. Trump how communications with the F.B.I. should work, Mr. Comey believed he had effectively drawn the line after a series of encounters he had with the president and other White House officials that he felt jeopardized the F.B.I.’s independence. At the time, Mr. Comey was overseeing the investigation into links between Mr. Trump’s associates and Russia.

I did not know this particular fact, but it doesn't surprise me at all. The principal source for the rest of this story is, well, me—specifically a long interview I gave to reporter Michael Schmidt on Friday about my conversations with FBI Director James Comey over the last few months, and particularly about one such conversation that took place on March 27 over lunch in Comey’s FBI office.

 
This story breaks hard on the heels of this week's revelation—also by the Times—that Trump had asked Comey to bury the investigation of Gen. Michael Flynn. A few words of elaboration are in order.

I called Schmidt Friday morning after reading his earlier story, which ran the previous evening, about Comey’s dinner with President Trump and the President’s demands at that dinner for a vow of loyalty. Schmidt had reported that Trump requested that Comey commit to personal loyalty to the President, and that Comey declined, telling the President that he would always have Comey’s “honesty.” When I read Schmidt’s account, I immediately understood certain things Comey had said to me over the previous few months in a different, and frankly more menacing, light. While I am not in the habit of discussing with reporters my confidential communications with friends, I decided that the things Comey had told me needed to be made public.

 
As I told Schmidt, I did not act in any sense at Comey’s request. The information I provided, however, dovetails neatly with the Times's subsequent discovery of the personal confrontation described above between Comey and the President over investigative inquiries and inquiries directly to the Bureau from the White House.

I did this interview on the record because the President that morning was already issuing threatening tweets suggesting that Comey was leaking things, and I didn’t want any room for misunderstanding that any kind of leak had taken place with respect to the information I was providing. There was no leak from Comey, no leak from anyone else at the FBI, and no leak from anyone outside of the bureau either—just conversations between friends, the contents of which one friend is now disclosing. For the same reason, I insisted that Schmidt record the conversation and give me a copy of the recording, so that we had a good record of what was said: both what was said by Comey as reported by me, and what was said by me about the conversation. Schmidt and I have had a few clarifying phone calls since then that were not recorded. 

 
Before I go on, let me pause briefly to explain my relationship with Comey, which has been the subject of a lot of misinformation since I disclosed that we are friends in a piece in his defense a few months back. Ever since then, and particularly since Gizmodo used me as forensic evidence in its weird effort to out a supposed Comey Twitter account, people have developed this idea that Comey and I are especially close. Some people have even started following me on Twitter because they think I’m channeling Comey or am some secret line into his thinking. The truth is rather more pedestrian: We’re friends. We communicate regularly, but I am not among his close intimates or advisers. I know nothing about the Russia investigation that isn’t public. Comey has never talked to me about a live investigative matter—and I’ve never asked him to.

That said, sometimes, as friends do, we have lunch, and when we do so, we talk about things of mutual interest, like how Lawfare is going or how life running the FBI is going. And those latter conversations necessarily involve President Trump—and President Obama before him.

Note that in the conversations I’m going to describe here, I was not interviewing Comey. There are any number of follow-up questions I would ask were I meeting him in a journalistic capacity that I did not ask. So in the conversations I’m about to relate, the answers to all questions about whether I followed up on this or that point is that I did not. I never expected to be giving a public account of his thinking during this period. I took no notes. What follows is just my recollection of things he told about his interactions with Trump that I now believe flesh out the relationship between the two men in the weeks after that dinner about which the New York Times reported and in the period in which Trump also apparently asked Comey to back off of Flynn—and in which I now learn that Comey also told the President to stop asking the FBI about investigative matters.

The first point is a general one: Comey was preoccupied throughout this period with the need to protect the FBI from these inquiries on investigative matters from the White House. Two incidents involving such inquiries have become public: the Flynn discussion and Reince Priebus’s query to Andrew McCabe about whether the then-Deputy FBI Director could publicly dispute the New York Times’ reporting regarding communications between Trump associates and Russian officials. Whether there were other such incidents I do not know, but I suspect there were. What I do know is that Comey spent a great deal of energy doing what he alternately described as “training” the White House that officials had to go through the Justice Department and “reestablishing” normal hands-off White House-Bureau relations.

Comey never said specifically that this policing was about the Russia matter, but I certainly assumed that it was—probably alongside other things. While I do not know how many incidents we’re talking about, how severe they were, or their particular character, I do know this: Comey understood Trump’s people as having neither knowledge of nor respect for the independence of the law enforcement function. And he saw it as an ongoing task on his part to protect the rest of the Bureau from improper contacts and interferences from a group of people he did not regard as honorable. This was a general preoccupation of Comey’s in the months he and Trump overlapped—and the difference between this relationship and his regard for Obama (which was deep) was profound and palpable.

Second, Comey described at least two incidents which he regarded as efforts on the part of the President personally to compromise him or implicate him with either shows of closeness or actual chumminess with the President.

The first incident he told me about was the infamous "hug" from Trump after the inauguration.

The hug took place at a White House meeting to which Trump had invited law enforcement leadership to thank them for their role in the inauguration. Comey described really not wanting to go to that meeting, for the same reason he later did not want to go to the private dinner with Trump: the FBI director should be always at arm’s length from the President, in his view. There was an additional sensitivity here too, because many Democrats blamed Comey for Trump’s election, so he didn’t want any shows of closeness between the two that might reinforce a perception that he had put a thumb on the scale in Trump’s favor. But he also felt that he could not refuse a presidential invitation, particularly not one that went to a broad array of law enforcement leadership. So he went.

But as he told me the story, he tried hard to blend into the background and avoid any one-on-one interaction. He was wearing a blue blazer and noticed that the drapes were blue. So he stood in the back, right in front of the drapes, hoping Trump wouldn’t notice him camouflaged against the wall. If you look at the video, Comey is standing about as far from Trump as it is physically possible to be in that room.

And for a long time, he reported, Trump didn’t seem to notice him. The meeting was nearly over, he said, and he really thought he was going to get away without an individual interaction. But when you’re six foot, eight inches tall, it’s hard to blend in forever, and Trump ultimately singled him out—and did so with the most damning faint praise possible: “Oh, and there's Jim. He’s become more famous than me!”

Comey took the long walk across the room determined, he told me, that there was not going to be a hug. Bad enough that he was there; bad enough that there would be a handshake; he emphatically did not want any show of warmth.

Again, look at the video, and you’ll see Comey preemptively reaching out to shake hands. Trump grabs his hand and attempts an embrace. The embrace, however, is entirely one sided.

Comey was disgusted. He regarded the episode as a physical attempt to show closeness and warmth in a fashion calculated to compromise him before Democrats who already mistrusted him.

The loyalty dinner took place five days later.

Comey never told me the details of the dinner meeting; I don’t think I even knew that there had been a meeting over dinner until I learned it from the Times story. But he did tell me in general terms that early on, Trump had “asked for loyalty” and that Comey had promised him only honesty. He also told me that Trump was perceptibly uncomfortable with this answer. And he said that ever since, the President had been trying to be chummy in a fashion that Comey felt was designed to absorb him into Trump’s world—to make him part of the team. Comey was deeply uncomfortable with these episodes. He told me that Trump sometimes talked to him a fashion designed to implicate him in Trump’s way of thinking. While I was not sure quite what this meant, it clearly disquieted Comey. He felt that these conversations were efforts to probe how resistant he would be to becoming a loyalist. In light of the dramatic dinner meeting and the Flynn request, it’s easy to see why they would be upsetting and feel like attempts at pressure.

On March 27, he described one incident in particular that had bothered him. Comey was about to get on a helicopter when his phone rang. It was the White House saying that the President wanted to speak with him. Figuring there must be something urgent going on, he delayed his flight to take the call. To his surprise, the President just wanted to chitchat. He was trying to be social, Comey related; there was no agenda, much less an urgent one. Notably, since the President has claimed that Comey told him in two phone conversations that he was not under investigation, Comey said nothing to me about the subject coming up in this call. Indeed, he regarded the call as weird for how substanceless it was. What bothered Comey was twofold—the fact that the conversation happened at all (why was Trump calling him to exchange pleasantries?) and the fact that there was an undercurrent of Trump’s trying to get him to kiss the ring.

By the time we had lunch that day, Comey thought he had the situation under control. It had required a lot of work, he said, to train the White House that there were questions officials couldn’t ask and that all contacts had to go through the Justice Department. But he thought the work had been done. After reading the top few paragraphs of the Times story, I now have no doubt that he was referring among other things to the conversation with the President, which he did not mention specifically to me. He also thought that policing the lines he had established was going to require constant vigilance on his part in the future.

He said repeatedly that it was going to be a very long few years. And he joked that the hashtag I use on Twitter—#NotesFromUnderTrump, which identifies the particular day of the Trump presidency—was ticking very slowly.

He said one other thing that day that, in retrospect, stands out in my memory: he expressed wariness about the then-still-unconfirmed deputy attorney general nominee, Rod Rosenstein. This surprised me because I had always thought well of Rosenstein and had mentioned his impending confirmation as a good thing. But Comey did not seem enthusiastic. The DOJ does need Senate-confirmed leadership, he agreed, noting that Dana Boente had done a fine job as acting deputy but that having confirmed people to make important decisions was critical. And he agreed with me that Rosenstein had a good reputation as a solid career guy.

That said, his reservations were palpable. “Rod is a survivor,” he said. And you don’t get to survive that long across administrations without making compromises. “So I have concerns.”

In retrospect, I think I know what Comey must have been thinking at that moment. He had been asked to pledge loyalty by Trump. When he had declined, and even before, he had seen repeated efforts to—from his point of view—undermine his independence and probe the FBI’s defenses against political interference. He had been asked to drop an investigation. He had spent the last few months working to defend the normative lines that protect the FBI from the White House. And he had felt the need personally to make clear to the President that there were questions he couldn't ask about investigative matters. So he was asking himself, I suspect: What loyalty oath had Rosenstein been asked to swear, and what happened at whatever dinner that request took place?

I don’t want to make a unified field theory out of these incidents, which are pieces of a much larger mosaic—a mosaic that surely includes whatever Comey knew about the Russia investigation, among many other things. But I am confident that these incidents tell a story about Comey’s thinking over the months that he and Trump were in office together. And I think they also sketch a trajectory in which Trump kept Comey on board only as long as it took him to figure out that there was no way to make Comey part of the team. Once he realized that he couldn’t do that—and that the Russia matter was thus not going away—he pulled the trigger.

out of school, with red solo cups

With President Trump gone, staff members including Budget Director Mulvaney socialize with red solo cups on an EEOB balcony on WH complex.: image via Andrew Harnik @andyharnik, 19 May 2017

With President Trump gone, staff members including Budget Director Mulvaney socialize with red solo cups on an EEOB balcony on WH complex.: image via Andrew Harnik @andyharnik, 19 May 2017

CUTE ALERT: With @realDonaldTrump gone, a duck and her ducklings appear outside the West Wing... There's a Donald Duck joke here somewhere…: image via Andrew Harnik @andyharnik, 19 May 2017

New Russia probe leaks threaten to derail Trump's foreign trip: Eric Beech and Jeff Mason | WASHINGTON, Reuters, 19 May 2017

U.S. President Donald Trump was hit on Friday by embarrassing leaks that a senior adviser was a "person of interest" in a probe of possible collusion with Russia during last year's election campaign and that Trump had boasted to Russian officials of firing the man heading the investigation.The reports, emerging just as Trump jetted off to Saudi Arabia on his first foreign trip as president, were likely to extend the turmoil engulfing his administration since the May 9 firing of former FBI Director James Comey.
 
The Washington Post, citing sources familiar with the matter, did not identify the senior Trump adviser except to say that the person of interest was close to Trump, a Republican who entered the White House four months ago.
 
U.S. law enforcement uses the term "a person of interest" to mean someone who is part of a criminal investigation but not arrested or formally accused of a crime. The person may be cooperating or have information of use to investigators.
 
Separately the New York Times reported that Trump boasted to Russian officials at a White House meeting last week that firing Comey relieved "great pressure" the president faced from a law-enforcement probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
 
"I just fired the head of the FBI. He was crazy, a real nut job," Trump said, according to the Times, which cited a document summarizing the meeting and read to it by an unnamed U.S. official.
 
"I faced great pressure because of Russia. That's taken off."
 
Trump met Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russia's ambassador to Washington in the Oval Office the day after Trump fired Comey, who was in charge of the Russia election probe.
 
The Times said the document was based on notes taken from inside the Oval Office. Reuters was not immediately able to verify the accuracy of that account.
 
Comey, who has not spoken publicly in the 10 days since he was fired, will testify in an open session of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, which is investigating possible Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
 
Committee leaders said on Friday he would appear sometime after the U.S. Memorial Day holiday on May 29.

@realDonaldTrump and First Lady Melania Trump board Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews, en route Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.: image via Stephen Crowley @Stcrow, 19 May 2017

@realDonaldTrump and @FLOTUS board Air Force One for first presidential trip abroad, heading to Saudi Arabia.: image via Jeff Mason @jeffmason1, 19 May 2017

White House advisers and @realDonaldTrump daughter and son-in-law @IvankaTrump and Jared Kushner board AF1.: image via Jeff Mason @jeffmason1, 19 May 2017

 
Looking forward to a meaningful visit to the Middle East and the Vatican in promotion of religious tolerance globally: image via Ivanka Trump @IvankaTrump, 19 May 2017

The IndependentVerified account @Independent

Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner 'person of interest in Russia investigation'

Sarah Kendzior Retweeted The Independent
Sarah Kendzior added,

Not mentioned here, but Kushner left off Russian ties in his security clearance forms. Normally this results in clearance being stripped.
image via Sarah Kendzior @sarahkendzior, 19 May 2017 

'person of interest'

 
Kushner ‘person of interest’ in Russia probe: Report: image via Press TV @PressTV, 19 May 2017

 

Jared Kushner is always photographed like the camera is zooming in on the real killer in a Law and Order episode.: image via Born Miserable @bornmiserable 19 May 2017

Mr Kushner is accompanying Mr Trump on his first official foreign visit: photo by Getty via The Independent, 19 May 2017

Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner 'person of interest' in Russia investigation: A former FBI Director is heading the probe: Andrew Buncombe, Mythill Sampathkumar in New York, The Independent US, 19 May 2017

Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has reportedly been identified as a "person of interest" in the ongoing investigation into possible ties between Russia and Donald Trump's campaign.

The Washington Post said a senior adviser to Mr Trump was among people investigators wanted to speak to. A New York magazine reporter then said the person in question was Mr Kushner, 36, who is married to Mr Trump’s eldest daughter and who flew out of Washington on Friday night to accompany the President on his first official foreign trip.

 
The Post said the person under investigation was close to the President, but did not identify them. However, the number of people who fit such a profile would be very small.

Yashar Ali, a contributor to New York magazine said on Twitter, "It's Jared Kushner. Have oconfirmed this with four people. I'm not speculating."

The White House did not immediately respond to calls and emails from The Independent seeking comment. The Trump Organisation, which controls the President's financial interests, also did not respond to queries.

 
White House officials have previously acknowledged contacts between Russian officials and Mr Kushner, as well as with Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

 
The revelation came just two days after the Justice Department announced that former FBI Director, Robert Mueller, had been appointed special counsel to lead the investigation into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

 
Reports suggest the investigation also appears to be entering a more overtly active phase, with investigators shifting from work that has remained largely hidden from the public to conducting interviews and using a grand jury to issue subpoenas. The intensity of the probe is expected to accelerate in the coming weeks, the Post said.

 
It said investigators remained keenly interested in people who previously wielded influence in the Trump campaign and administration but are no longer part of it, including former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

 
The report was published as Mr Trump travelled to Saudi Arabia on the first leg of a trip abroad that the White House hopes will shift attention away from the political firestorm triggered by his firing last week of former FBI Director James Comey.

Mr Comey was previously leading the probe.

His firing and news reports that Mr Trump had previously asked Mr Comey to stop investigating Mr Flynn led critics to charge that Mr Trump may have improperly sought to hamper the FBI probe. 

“As the President has stated before - a thorough investigation will confirm that there was no collusion between the campaign and any foreign entity,” White House spokesman Sean Spicer said in a statement in response to the Post’s report.

Separately, the New York Times reported on Friday that Mr Trump told Russian officials at a White House meeting last week that firing Mr Comey relieved “great pressure” that the president was facing from the ongoing probe into Russia and the election.

 
“I just fired the head of the FBI. He was crazy, a real nut job,” Mr Trump said, according to the Times, which cited a document summarising the meeting and which was read to the newspaper by a US official. “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”

 
Mr Trump met Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russia’s Ambassador to Washington in the Oval Office the day after he fired Mr Comey.

 
Earlier this year, the White House issued a statement saying Mr Kushner had volunteered to testify before the Senate intelligence committee in relation to its Russia investigation.

 
“Mr. Kushner will certainly not be the last person the committee calls to give testimony, but we expect him to be able to provide answers to key questions that have arisen in our inquiry,” said a statement from the Senate intelligence committee.

Molotov cocktails are thrown at police officers in riot gear standing in front of the Greek Parliament during a rally against new austerity: image via Thanassis Stavrakis @TStavrak, 18 May 2017

A car rests on a security barrier in New York's Times Square after driving through a crowd of pedestrians @AP: image via AP Images @AP_Images, 18 May 2017

A news ticker on the News Corp building announces the death of former Fox News Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes, May 18, 2017, in New York.: image via AP Images @AP_Images, 18 May 2017

President Donald Trump accompanied by Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, arrives for a news conference in the East Room of the White House, Thursday, May, 18th, 2017, in Washington.: photo by Andrew Harnik/AP, 18 May 2017

An aide, left, speaks with Rep. Joe Crowley, D-N.Y., chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, and House Oversight and Government Reform Committee ranking member, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, May 17, 2017, behind a photograph of President Donald Trump and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, during a news conference.: photo by Alex Brandon/AP, 17 May 2017

Television network crews begin their evening news broadcast from the driveway outside the West Wing of the White House in Washington, Wednesday, May 17, 2017. The Justice Department has appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller as a special counsel to oversee a federal investigation into potential coordination between Russia and the Donald Trump campaign to influence the 2016 presidential election.: photo by Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP, 17  May 2017

President Donald Trump poses for a photo with U.S. Coast Guard graduate Erin Leigh Reynolds during commencement exercises at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn., Wednesday, May 17, 2017.: photo by Susan Walsh/AP, 17 May 2017

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Hong Kong, Eye: photo by Edas Wong, 14 May 2017

Hong Kong, Eye: photo by Edas Wong, 14 May 2017

Hong Kong, Eye: photo by Edas Wong, 14 May 2017

 

DSCF4260: photo by Caspar Claasen, 9 May 2017

DSCF4260: photo by Caspar Claasen, 9 May 2017

DSCF4260: photo by Caspar Claasen, 9 May 2017

[Dhaka]: photo by Muhammad Imam Hasan, 17 May 2017

New York 2017: photo by Jeff James, 3 May 2017

New York 2017: photo by Jeff James, 3 May 2017

New York 2017: photo by Jeff James, 3 May 2017

A Kashmiri boy shields himself from stones and glass marbles during a clash between Indian police and protesters in Indian controlled Kashmir.: image via AP Images @AP_Images, 19 May 2017