Senators lay blame on Saudi prince

WASHINGTON — Senators leaving a briefing with CIA Director Gina Haspel on Tuesday said they are even more convinced that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was involved in the death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn., said he believes that if the crown prince were put on trial, a jury would find him guilty in “about 30 minutes.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who demanded the briefing with Haspel, said there is “zero chance” the crown prince wasn’t involved in Khashoggi’s death.

“There’s not a smoking gun. There’s a smoking saw,” Graham said, referring to reports from the Turkish government that said Saudi agents used a bone saw to dismember Khashoggi after he was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

But President Donald Trump has equivocated over who is to blame for the killing, frustrating senators who are now looking for ways to punish the longtime Middle East ally.

Senators overwhelmingly voted last week to move forward on a resolution curtailing U.S. backing for the Saudi-led war in Yemen.

Haspel met with a small group of senators, including the chairmen and top Democrats on the key national security committees.

Democrat Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois said the briefing with Haspel “clearly went in to an evaluation of the intelligence” and was much more informative.

Some senators were frustrated that they were not invited to the briefing with Haspel.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, a Republican and a critic of Saudi Arabia, said that excluding some lawmakers is “the very definition of the deep state” and that he suspected that the Trump administration is attempting to get some lawmakers to switch their votes on the resolution by giving them information.

Khashoggi was killed two months ago. The journalist, who had lived for a time in the U.S. and wrote for the Washington Post, had been critical of the Saudi regime.

He was killed in what U.S. officials have described as an elaborate plot as he visited the consulate for marriage paperwork.

U.S. intelligence officials have concluded that the crown prince must have at least known of the plot, but Trump has been reluctant to pin the blame.