President Trump really wants to let Saudi Arabia off the hook for murdering the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who wrote for the Washington Post and lived legally in the United States, and the question is why.
Khashoggi, who had been critical of the Saudi regime, and sought to set up a pro-democracy organization in Washington, entered the Saudi consulate in Turkey on October 2 and never emerged. Turkish officials say agents of the Saudi regime murdered him and sneaked his dismembered body out of the country.
At an Oval Office press event Thursday, Trump essentially warned Congress—and signaled to Saudi leaders—that he will not sanction Saudi individuals for murdering Khashoggi under any circumstances, in order to protect $110 billion in U.S. arms sales to the Saudi kingdom.
“If it turns out to be as bad as it might be, there are certainly other ways of handling the situation,” he said. “But I will tell you up front, right now, and I’ll say it in front of senators, they’re spending $110 billion purchasing military equipment and other things. If we don’t sell it to them, they’ll say ‘well thank you very much, we’ll buy it from Russia,’ or, ‘thank you very much, we’ll buy it from China.’” If Trump wanted the Saudis to come clean, the threat of sanctions would be a powerful tool, but the master dealmaker just gave up all of his leverage. Curious.
On Wednesday, Sens. Bob Corker (R-TN) and Bob Menendez (D-NJ), the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, sent a letter to President Trump, signed by nearly two dozen committee members and others, which triggers provisions of a law called the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act. Under the terms of the law, the letter from Corker and Menendez requires the Trump administration to investigate Khashoggi’s disappearance, and, if he was murdered, formally determine within 120 days whether or not to sanction the individuals responsible.
Trump’s reluctance to upset Saudi Arabia is particularly alarming in light of his actions since Khashoggi went missing, and reports about how his administration responded to threats against Khashoggi’s safety.
For days, Trump pretended to know nothing about Khashoggi’s wellbeing. But as the Washington Post reported Wednesday, the U.S. intelligence community was fully aware that the Saudis intended to capture and possibly harm Khashoggi, and that intelligence “had been disseminated throughout the U.S. government…contained in reports that are routinely available to people working on U.S. policy toward Saudi Arabia.”
That almost undoubtedly includes Jared Kushner, who forged a close relationship with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, and likely Trump himself. If that intelligence said the Saudis were planning to kill him, then by law the U.S. government had a “duty to warn” Khasshogi about the danger he faced.
The world is watching. Trump’s response to this horrific attack will either signal that there will be repercussions to cracking down on dissent, or that the U.S. will turn a blind eye.
From Brian: Speculation about whether the Kushners and Trumps have personal financial interests in the U.S.-Saudi relationship has dogged the administration since Trump took office, and flew to Saudi Arabia for his first official trip abroad. The questions the potential conflicts of interest raise—about what Trump knew when, and why he’s reluctant to take action now—are almost too dark to fathom, but they require answers.
