TRUMP ‘NOT SATISFIED’ WITH SAUDI EXPLANATION
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Monday he’s not satisfied with the explanations he’s heard about the death of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi and is awaiting reports from U.S. personnel returning from the region.
Khashoggi, who lived in the United States and wrote critically about the Saudi royal family, died earlier this month at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. Saudi Arabia said he was killed in a fistfight, but Turkish officials said the 59-year-old Washington Post columnist was attacked and killed by a 15-man Saudi team.
Asked if he believed Saudi Arabia’s explanation, Trump said, “I am not satisfied with what I’ve heard.”
“We’re going to get to the bottom of it. We have people over in Saudi Arabia now. We have top intelligence people in Turkey. They’re coming back either tonight or tomorrow,” Trump told reporters on the South Lawn of the White House before leaving for a political rally in Texas.
“We’re going to know a lot over the next two days about the Saudi situation,” said Trump. “It’s a very sad thing.”
Trump spoke Sunday with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is the son of Saudi King Salman.
“He says he is not involved nor is the king,” Trump told USA Today in an interview aboard Air Force One Monday en route to a political rally in Texas. The newspaper said Trump declined to say whether he believed the crown prince’s denials. If their involvement was proven, Trump said: “I would be very upset about it. We’ll have to see.”
Trump characterized Khashoggi’s incident as a “plot gone awry” and told the newspaper he didn’t think the writer was deliberately lured into the consulate to be killed.
According to surveillance video leaked Monday, just hours after Khashoggi was killed, a man strolled out of the diplomatic post apparently wearing the columnist’s clothes as part of a macabre deception to sow confusion over his fate.
The new video broadcast by CNN, as well as a pro-government Turkish newspaper’s report that a member of the crown prince’s entourage made four calls to the royal’s office from the consulate around the same time, put ever-increasing pressure on the kingdom.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin met with the crown prince on Monday night. U.S. Treasury spokesman Tony Sayegh said in a tweet that Mnuchin raised the Kashoggi investigation in his discussions with the crown prince.