White House resists Khashoggi inquiry
Senate wants to know prince’s role
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration was set to ignore a Friday deadline for giving the Senate a full accounting of the role of Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, in the brutal slaying of U.S.-based Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi four months ago.
The administration, which has consistently sought to shield Saudi rulers from blame, had until midnight Friday to answer senators’ questions about whether Prince Mohammed ordered the killing, as U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded, and what additional sanctions should be placed on the government in Riyadh.
The deadline was set by Democratic and Republican senators, who wrote the president on Oct. 10 — slightly more than a week after Mr. Khashoggi’s disappearance — calling for an investigation and invoking the Global Magnitsky Act that imposes sanctions on egregious abusers of international human rights. Under the rules, the president had 120 days to respond.
Senators said President Donald Trump was obliged by law to answer. Administration officials contended that the law was not binding and that the president was within his rights to ignore the senators’ demands.
A bipartisan group of senators, anticipating administration inaction, reintroduced a bill Thursday from late last year that would restrict arms sales to Saudi Arabia in response to the Khashoggi killing and the disastrous Saudi-led war in Yemen.
Sen. Robert Menendez, of New Jersey, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the legislation was aimed at “preventing President Trump from sweeping Mr. Khashoggi’s murder under the rug.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina, a Republican close to the president, said sanctions were long overdue for “this barbaric act.”
“While Saudi Arabia is a strategic ally, the behavior of the crown prince — in multiple ways — has shown disrespect for the relationship and made him, in my view, beyond toxic,” Mr. Graham said.
Mr. Khashoggi, a resident of Virginia who wrote columns for The Washington Post that were often critical of the Saudi monarchy, was strangled and dismembered inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, on Oct. 2. After weeks of denials, the Saudi government finally acknowledged his death but blamed the killing on “rogue” Saudi agents.
U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that such a brazen act would have had to be ordered by Crown Prince Mohammed. But Mr. Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, keen to preserve a robust diplomatic and economic relationship with Riyadh that includes arm sales and mutual antagonism toward Iran, have refused to accept those findings.