Trump stands with Saudi Arabia over Khashoggi killing

U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday declared his strong support for Saudi Arabia while undermining the CIA’s conclusion that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was responsible for the brutal death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, issuing a remarkable exclamation-mark packed statement that effectively called for an end to the debate over whether to stand by the kingdom.

Even for a president who routinely equates global affairs with business transactions, Trump’s calculation was startling. In weighing how to respond to what his own intelligence officials have essentially deemed a state-sanctioned murder, the president decided that oil production, weapons sales and geopolitical advantage were more important than holding an ally to account.

The United States “may never know all of the facts surrounding the murder,” Trump said, noting that both King Salman and his son, Mohammed, “vig- orously deny any knowledge of the planning or execution of the murder of Mr. Khashoggi,” which Trump called a “crime.”

He offered dubious examples of how the Saudis enhance the U.S. economy, and stressed the importance of staying in the kingdom’s good graces.

At the same time, the president acknowledged that the crown prince may well have ordered the murder of Khashoggi, a prominent critic of Mohammed’s policies who wrote columns for the Washington Post, while seeming to shrug off how much that mattered.

“Our intelligence agencies continue to assess all information, but it could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event — maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!” Trump said.

Despite mounting evidence of the prince’s role, some of which the president has seen during intelligence briefings, Trump indicated that U.S. economic interests, especially the billions of dollars in arms purchases he said the Saudis would make, outweighed the need to establish whether Mohammed was involved and, if so, punished.