Thread: Trump Jumps to the Defense of Saudi Arabia in Khashoggi Case

Trump Jumps to the Defense of Saudi Arabia in Khashoggi Case

By Ben Hubbard, Rick Gladstone and Mark Landler
Oct. 16, 2018

BEIRUT, Lebanon — The Trump administration pushed back on Tuesday against rising condemnation of Saudi Arabia and showed support for its crown prince, who has been linked to the disappearance and possible murder of a leading dissident journalist inside a Saudi consulate in Turkey.

In his strongest language to date over the missing journalist, President Trump said in an interview with The Associated Press: “Here we go again with you’re guilty until proven innocent.”

Hours earlier, Mr. Trump’s top diplomat, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, arrived in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, smiling and shaking hands with the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.

Mr. Pompeo issued a statement saying Saudi leaders had promised a “thorough, transparent, and timely investigation” into what had befallen the journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, after he entered the consulate on Oct. 2. Mr. Trump and Mr. Pompeo also said the Saudi leaders had repeated their emphatic denials of any involvement in Mr. Khashoggi’s disappearance.

After days of leaks by Turkish officials that accused Saudi Arabia of sending a hit squad to kill Mr. Khashoggi and dismember him with a bone saw, this was the latest indication that the Trump administration would help its top Arab ally defuse an international crisis.

The administration’s moves have come as criticism of Crown Prince Mohammed has intensified — including by Republican members of Congress, business leaders and human rights officials — over Mr. Khashoggi’s disappearance and apparent murder.

Saudi Arabia also took steps on Tuesday to please the White House. Just as Mr. Pompeo met with Saudi leaders, a long-promised Saudi pledge of $100 million to help American aid efforts in Syrian areas liberated from the Islamic State was deposited in State Department accounts.

Neither Mr. Trump nor Mr. Pompeo provided any new insights into what had happened to Mr. Khashoggi. But with his comment about presumed guilt, Mr. Trump drew a parallel to the sexual assault accusations made against his newest Supreme Court justice, Brett M. Kavanaugh.

Mr. Trump’s reference to the bitter confirmation battle over Justice Kavanaugh was telling. In that case, he initially took a restrained tone, observing that the judge’s accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, appeared credible in her testimony before the Senate about an alleged sexual assault.

But over time, as the furor threatened to irreparably tarnish his nominee, Mr. Trump discarded restraint. He complained that Justice Kavanaugh had been unfairly accused, raised questions about Dr. Blasey’s account, and even mocked her at a rally.

In the case of Mr. Khashoggi, Mr. Trump first expressed concern about the allegations and warned of severe consequences if the Saudi government were found responsible. But after days of unconvincing denials from the Saudis and growing evidence that Crown Prince Mohammed or his family may have been involved, Mr. Trump is shifting to a tone of defiance.

There are signs that Mr. Trump’s defense of Mr. Kavanaugh appealed to his political base, and may even have boosted the prospects of Republicans in the midterm elections. But a Saudi prince is different than a Supreme Court nominee, and unlike in Justice Kavanaugh’s case, there could yet be conclusive evidence of a heinous crime.

Mr. Khashoggi was last seen entering Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul seeking marriage documents. Speaking anonymously, Turkish officials say they have evidence he was killed within two hours of entering the consulate by a team of Saudi agents.

“Answers will be forthcoming shortly,” Mr. Trump said on Twitter, relaying that he had spoken with Crown Prince Mohammed on a phone call that also included Mr. Pompeo.

Prince Mohammed, Mr. Trump said, “totally denied any knowledge of what took place in their Turkish consulate.”

The crown prince “has already started, and will rapidly expand, a full and complete investigation into this matter,” the president said.

Speaking to reporters in Riyadh early Wednesday before departing for Turkey for talks with its top officials, Mr. Pompeo said Saudi leaders had promised him a complete and transparent investigation. “They made a commitment that they would show the entire world the results of their investigation,” he said. “They also made a commitment they would get this done quickly.”

Asked if the Saudis told him whether Mr. Khashoggi was alive, Mr. Pompeo declined to answer. “I don’t want to talk about any of the facts,” he said. “They didn’t want to either, in that they want to have the opportunity to complete this investigation in a thorough way.”

Mr. Khashoggi, who wrote columns for The Washington Post, lived in the United States, and his 60th birthday was on Saturday.

Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, told reporters in Ankara on Tuesday that investigators who searched the consulate on Monday and Tuesday were looking into “toxic materials, and those materials being removed by painting them over.” Turkish news outlets, citing unnamed sources, have reported that Mr. Khashoggi was drugged, and that parts of the consulate and the nearby consul’s residence were repainted after the journalist’s disappearance.

Later in the day, the Saudi consul, Mohammed al-Otaibi, left the country, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said. Mr. Pompeo is expected to travel to Ankara, the Turkish capital, on Wednesday.

Mr. Trump has vowed “severe punishment” if a Saudi hand is confirmed in Mr. Khashoggi’s killing, but has said he does not want the case to affect arms sales that create American jobs.

But on Monday, a person familiar with Saudi plans said the kingdom was likely to say that the killing was an accident committed by “rogue” Saudi agents, not an assassination ordered from Riyadh. The Saudi version of the story will probably be that officials intended to interrogate and abduct Mr. Khashoggi, spiriting him back to Saudi Arabia, but that they botched the job, killing him instead, the person said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because Saudi officials had yet to talk publicly about their plans.

The reported killing has created a bipartisan uproar in Congress, shaking the foundations of the close American-Saudi relationship with calls for suspension of military sales punctuated by particularly strong rebukes of Crown Prince Mohammed, who basically rules the kingdom for his father, King Salman.

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and formerly a strong advocate of Saudi Arabia, has been among the most outspoken critics of the crown prince over the Khashoggi mystery, even before more facts are known. “He had this guy murdered in the consulate in Turkey,” Mr. Graham said Tuesday on the “Fox and Friends” news program. “Expect me to ignore it? I feel used and abused.”

Mr. Graham said that “I’m not going back to Saudi Arabia as long as this guy’s in charge,” and suggested the king remove the prince from power. “This guy is a wrecking ball,” the senator said.

A Turkish investigator working on the roof of the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Monday as part of an inquiry into Mr. Khashoggi’s disappearance.CreditOzan Kose/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

For two weeks, Saudi leaders, including both the king and the crown prince, have denied that their country had anything to do with Mr. Khashoggi’s disappearance and have said that they did not know where he was. Saudi officials have insisted that he left the consulate, safe and free, the same day he entered it, although they have offered no supporting evidence.

But by Monday night, it appeared that the Trump administration and Turkey’s leaders were leaving room for a new version of events: Mr. Trump said after speaking with King Salman that perhaps “rogue killers” had been involved.

At their meeting on Tuesday, Mr. Pompeo “thanked the king for his commitment to supporting a thorough, transparent and timely investigation of Jamal Khashoggi’s disappearance,” said Heather Nauert, a State Department spokeswoman.

Mr. Pompeo was greeted on arrival by Prince Khalid bin Salman, a son of the king and younger brother of the crown prince. Prince Khalid had been serving as the Saudi ambassador to Washington, but returned to Riyadh last week, and United States officials said he was unlikely to return.

After seeing the king, Mr. Pompeo met with Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, and later with Crown Prince Mohammed.

“We are strong and old allies,” the crown prince said in English, in brief remarks as the meeting began. “We face our challenges together.”

The administration has refused calls to back down from lucrative weapon sales to Saudi Arabia. And Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, still plans to attend a Saudi investment forum next week, even as several American businesses and lobbyists have distanced themselves from the country.

On Tuesday morning, Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter, “For the record, I have no financial interests in Saudi Arabia.” It was not clear what prompted that statement, but several news organizations have noted recently that the president has boasted about real estate deals with wealthy Saudis and once sold his yacht to a Saudi prince — ties that had been reported before, but that have drawn new attention because of the Khashoggi case.

Amid mounting international outrage over the disappearance, the United Nations human rights chief, Michelle Bachelet, said on Tuesday that the Saudi authorities should reveal all they know.

The Washington Post’s publisher and chief executive, Fred Ryan, also spoke out while Mr. Pompeo was visiting with the Saudis. “The Saudi government can no longer remain silent, and it is essential that our own government and others push harder for the truth,” Mr. Ryan said on Twitter.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/16/w...ia-turkey.html

Why are the media so interested in the Khashoggi death over so many other deaths?

Seth Rich, Kate Steinle, Brian Terry, Chris Stevens ... the list is long

October 17, 2018
By Jack Hellner

The media and other Democrats are extremely concerned about missing Jamal Khashoggi, as they should be, and they believe the Saudis murdered him.
I am just curious why they had so little concern about other people who have been killed and why there is so much coverage about Khashoggi in comparison:
On Dec. 14, 2010 border guard Brian Terry was murdered with an AK-47 provided by the Obama administration.
President Obama and his attorney general, Eric Holder, improperly withheld information from Congress for years, showing they had little empathy at all for Terry while journalists throughout the country and other Democrats generally didn’t care. Remember this?

A federal judge on Tuesday ruled President Obama cannot use executive privilege to keep records on the “Fast and Furious” gun-tracking program from Congress.
U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson ordered the administration to release documents that it has been attempting to withhold by asserting executive privilege.
The ruling also requires the administration to release to Congress all "segregable portions" of records they are withholding that are considered “attorney-client privileged material, attorney work product, private information, law enforcement sensitive material, or foreign policy sensitive material.”

On Sept. 11, 2012, four Americans were under attack in Libya and calling for help. Instead of lifting a finger to help, Obama and his then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton concocted a lie about a video and even sent out then-United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice to lie to several networks. They did all of this to protect their political power before the election. They even lied to the families of those who died. I recall little empathy from the media or Democrats for the families of those who died. Instead they supported Obama and Hillary no matter what they did or said.
Obama and his later Secretary of State John Kerry proudly gave hundreds of billions of dollars to Iran which is responsible for many deaths throughout the world and which still pledges death to Israel and death to America. Yet the media and Democrats as a whole supported this deal.
Obama's White House spin doctor Ben Rhodes also admitted that the Obama administration used the media to spread lies about the Iran deal. Remember this?

One of President Obama’s top national security advisers led journalists to believe a misleading timeline of U.S. negotiations with Iran over a nuclear agreement and relied on inexperienced reporters to create an “echo chamber” that helped sway public opinion to seal the deal, according to a lengthy magazine profile.

Throughout Obama’s eight years, most of the media was just willing to repeat whatever they were told instead of actually asking questions. That made the manipulation and propaganda-spreading extremely easy.
Obama also stopped the Justice department’s investigation into a major drug-running operation by the terrorist group Hezbollah to appease Iran. See here:

Obama 'blocked' Hezbollah drugs trafficking investigation to secure Iran nuclear deal
The former US president’s team was said to have put “roadblocks” in place to slow the investigation amid fears it would undermine negotiations with the regime.
The claims were made in an article by Politico, the politics website, and relate back to when Mr Obama was in the White House.
The allegations are linked to Project Cassandra, a campaign launched in 2008 by the Drug Enforcement Administration against Hezbollah.
It was said to have detailed how the Iranian-backed terror group morphed from a political and military organisation into an “international crime syndicate”.
In particular agents were said to be investigating an alleged $1 billion-a-year funding stream from drugs, weapons trafficking, money laundering and other crimes.

What a tradeoff. How many thousands of people may have died because of overdoses? The media and other Democrats seemed to have little interest in this and continued to pretend that Obama never interfered with the “independent” Justice department.
Then, in San Francisco, Kate Steinle died on July 1, 2015 at the hands of a criminal illegal alien who had been deported multiple times, and since this just didn’t fit the Democrats agenda, her life just wasn’t important. Her killer walked off scot-free. Democrats said nothinggggg.
On July 10, 2016 Seth Rich, who worked with the DNC, was murdered in the middle of the campaign and somehow the Washington Post, the DNC, the Justice department, Democrats and the rest of the media didn’t have much interest in solving the case. Aren’t they concerned that the Russian did it?
Journalists, in conjunction with other Democrats, have repeatedly shown they don’t really care about people who die when they don’t fit in with an agenda.
The reason there is so much emphasis on Khashoggi is because they believe it will harm Trump and help Democrats in the election. That is the goal of journalists every day. They should just admit that lives don’t matter if it happens to bring light to the harm of Democrats or their agenda.

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https://www.americanthinker.com/blog...er_deaths.html

After UAE 'Murder Squad' Revelations, How Many More Private US Hit Teams Are Under Gulf Regimes?



A private murder squad of ex-US special forces members was paid over $1.5 million a month to kill enemies of the UAE crown prince...

In The World Of American Politics, One Khashoggi Is Worth One Million Yemeni Lives




"Shelling hospitals, mosques, schools, school buses, weddings, and funerals is one thing... but killing a Washington Post columnist, however, will not be brooked. "

I think the corrupt media is lying about Khashoggi being a permanent resident as in green card holder. I don't think that's the case. Someone needs to check that out because he didn't come to the US until sometime in 2017, and I have a hard time believing the Trump Administration gave this guy a green card. I think he came in on a tourist visa that expired in 6 months which is why he hopped off to Turkey in April when he met his new Turkish girlfriend, and she is the one who had him go into the Saudi consulate there to get approval for a divorce so they could get married, probably so he could establish permanent residency in Turkey.

Does anyone believe that the Trump Administration gave this guy, a dissident of Saudi Arabia, a former de facto head of the Muslim Brotherhood, a .... green card? No, I do not think so.

We need full disclosure of Khashoggi's actual factual immigration status in the United States.

This is important because I don't think he is a resident of any kind of the United States. He left the country and went to Turkey when his tourist visa expired

Khashoggi was a CIA Asset in Afghanistan from what I am hearing; who knows, if he is a green card holder it might have been offered to him for his work, He is a Turkish resident

Originally Posted by Airbornesapper07

Khashoggi was a CIA Asset in Afghanistan from what I am hearing; who knows, if he is a green card holder it might have been offered to him for his work, He is a Turkish resident

I don't think so, because Trump said in a press gaggle as only Trump would, "he's not a US citizen, what is it", and a reporter says he's a permanent legal resident, and John Roberts of Fox News clarified that he had "applied for permanent legal resident status", and Trump says, "uh huh", so ..... there's something fishy going on about Khashoggi's immigration status.

There should be a report put forth by DHS about his actual status, so we know whether or not he's even a "US person" at all. I don't think he is, I think the Washington Post has floated this rumor to involve the US in a matter that is not our concern on any level, in my opinion. If he died inside the Consulate, that's Saudi territory, he's a Saudi Citizen, that makes it Saudi's business. I'm not even sure it's Turkey's business UNLESS he is a "Turkish Person", in which case this whole mystery is between Turkey and Saudi Arabia and has nothing to do with the United States.

I think Turkey does its share of eliminating the dissidents, don't they? This is the pot calling the kettle black if you ask me. I mean Turkey just tried to send an actual US citizen to prison for 35 years on false accusations.

The former commander of the Cole gave his thoughts on the situation. People are being too quick to make decisions for retaliation following the alleged brutal murder of the Washington Post journalist.

We associate with and have relationships with many nations that do horrible things. China murders. Russia murders. Others, especially in the Middle East torture and murder.

We choose to do business with unsavory characters to get something in return. There are many out there across the world.

(We too are accused of murdering people or having them murdered at arm's distance.)

What the media isn’t telling you about the Jamal Khashoggi affair

Jordan Schachtel · October 16, 2018


MOHAMMED AL-SHAIKH/AFP | Getty Images

The legacy media isn’t telling you the full truth about Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi exile who is feared dead after he was last seen entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul earlier this month. His disappearance has created a media firestorm, resulting in tensions between the United States and its traditional Middle East partners.
We’ve been told that Khashoggi — who was living in the U.S. for the past year — was a voice for reform and democracy in a Middle East that is in desperate need of such individuals. However, a closer look at Khashoggi’s past activities reveals a man with an extremely regressive, anti-Western worldview and a consistent pattern of supporting fringe Islamist movements in the region.
Of course, no one deserves to be harmed for his views. However, Khashoggi’s disappearance (and likely death, at this point) does not give the foreign and domestic media a green light to play fast and loose with the facts.
Khashoggi the “journalist”
Pretty much the entirety of the legacy media has attached a wildly misleading “journalist” label to Jamal Khashoggi. While he was once a journalist for several state-controlled Gulf media enterprises, Khashoggi has not been anything resembling a journalist for quite some time.
Prior to his disappearance, Khashoggi was an opinion writer for the Washington Post’s “Global Opinions” section. He was also working with Islamists tied to the Muslim Brotherhood to create an organization called Democracy in the Arab World Now (DAWN).
Why does the “journalist” label continue to stick to Khashoggi?
We know that Saudi Arabia’s rivals, such as Turkey, Qatar, and Iran, seek to undermine the U.S.-Saudi alliance by any means necessary. And the optics are much worse for Riyadh if the Saudi monarchy is found to have executed a “journalist” rather than an Islamist activist.
Domestically, perhaps the media stubbornly insists on calling Khashoggi a “journalist” because it helps to advance the false media narrative that President Trump is waging a war on the free press. Notably, legacy reporters have been leveraging the Khashoggi situation to take shots at the president’s rhetoric.
Lee Smith over at The Federalist also points out that the “Obama echo chamber” of former Obama officials and their media lackeys have used the Khashoggi situation to score points against the Trump administration’s foreign policy.
Khashoggi the “reformer”
Jamal Khashoggi was never a reformer in the sense that he wanted to advance individual rights and overall freedoms in the Middle East. In fact, all of the evidence points to the reality that he was a regressive thinker and a dedicated Islamist who wanted to move Saudi Arabia to a more cleric-led society.
As an early ally to al Qaeda founders Osama Bin Laden and Abdullah Azzam, Khashoggi has been an Islamist for decades. While he may have disagreed with his old friend Bin Laden about how to impose an Islamic state on the world, the two shared the same endgame.
While Bin Laden preferred a much more aggressive strategy, Khashoggi appeared to be a supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood model of governance advanced by groups like Hamas and the short-lived Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt.
Both Hamas and the Morsi regime in Egypt were elected through the democratic process. Yet almost immediately after seizing power, the Brotherhood-aligned groups sought to impose extra-constitutional measures that would tighten their grip on power and ensure that there would never be another election.
Khashoggi’s “democracy” project is nothing more than a facade that would allow for the empowerment of Islamist actors. For the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies, history shows us that their first victorious election campaign quickly becomes the last election.
Khashoggi the “man of peace”
Today’s Middle East reform movements are largely backed by individuals and leaders who have rejected calls for perpetual Islamist warfare. Those in the U.S.-allied reformer camp — such as Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El Sisi, and UAE Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed — have preferred to focus on bolstering patriotism, combatting Islamism, pursuing secularization and modernization, and encouraging foreign and domestic entrepreneurism and investments.
The “soft-spoken” Khashoggi, on the other hand, has sought to drag the Islamic world into endless conflict.
And as is typical for many Islamists, Jamal Khashoggi had a serious bloodlust when it came to violence against the state of Israel. He expressed these violent aims in a 2014 piece for the Muslim Brotherhood-tied Middle East Monitor, in which he wrote that he hoped one day Islamic nations would join the U.S.-designated terrorist group Hamas in its campaign to destroy Israel. In another piece he wrote that year, Khashoggi shamed Arab states for not supporting the jihadi terror group.
What’s next?
Of course, violence is never the answer to political disagreements, and that is a clear message to all of our Middle East partners. The Khashoggi affair, however, is no reason to destroy all of the progress that the Trump administration has made in supporting historic, measureable Middle East reform efforts. The White House must continue following the pro-reform message articulated in president’s Riyadh speech in May 2017. To abandon reform now would empower America’s adversaries, strengthen Islamist movements, and jeopardize our Middle East allies.

https://www.conservativereview.com/n...jdL4LFe5jQcBXY

Jim Garrow

The “soft-spoken” Khashoggi has sought to drag the Islamic world into endless conflict.
And as is typical for many Islamists, Jamal Khashoggi had a serious bloodlust when it came to violence against the state of Israel. He expressed these violent aims in a 2014 piece for the Muslim Brotherhood-tied Middle East Monitor, in which he wrote that he hoped one day Islamic nations would join the U.S.-designated terrorist group Hamas in its campaign to destroy Israel. In another piece he wrote that year, Khashoggi shamed Arab states for not supporting the jihadi terror group.
- Jordan Schachtel -