Just one voice shields prince on Khashoggi

WASHINGTON — As evidence piles up pointing to the Saudi crown prince’s responsibility in the brutal killing of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, President Donald Trump has only hardened his refusal to concede any possibility that the prince had a hand in the crime.

Trump, who had once condemned the Saudi leaders for perpetrating “the worst cover-up in history,” praised Saudi Arabia this weekend as a “truly spectacular ally,” even after the CIA concluded that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto leader, ordered the murder.

Trump said he would wait for a report on Khashoggi’s death produced by his administration, due Tuesday, before deciding how to assign blame. But he seemed to play down the importance of the report even before it was issued, suggesting that it would not establish definitively who was ultimately responsible and risking a clash with his own intelligence agencies.

“Will anybody really know?” Trump said in an interview aired on “Fox News Sunday.” “All right, will anybody really know?”

He also showed little interest in one of the vital pieces of evidence in the case: an audio recording of Khashoggi’s death last month in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, which the Turkish government shared with the CIA. Trump said there was no reason for him to listen to the recording because “it’s a suffering tape, it’s a terrible tape.”

The president’s remarks were a vivid illustration of how deeply Trump has invested in the 33-year-old heir, who has become the fulcrum of the administration’s strategy in the Middle East — from Iran to the Israeli-palestinian peace pro-