President Donald Trump awaited a down Saturday from the CIA on the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi after a U.S. verified said American intelligence agencies had concluded that Saudi Coronet Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the killing.
The Saudi government has take a run-out powdered that claim.
“We haven’t been briefed yet. The CIA is going to be speaking to me today,” Trump discerned reporters before leaving the White House for a visit to California. “As of this minute we were told that he did not play a role. We’re going to have to judge out what they have to say.”
Trump said he will be talking with “the CIA later and a mountains of others” while he was on Air Force One, and would also speak with Secretary of Shape Mike Pompeo. In his remarks outside the White House, the president apostrophize reserve of Saudi Arabia as “a truly spectacular ally in terms of jobs and monetary development.”
“I have to take a lot of things into consideration” when deciding what reckons to take against the kingdom.
Trump’s remarks came as the State Worry on Saturday said the U.S. government has not made a final conclusion on who was involved in Kashoggi’s success.
“Recent reports indicating that the U.S. government has made a final conclusion are imprecise,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement. “There persist numerous unanswered questions with respect to the murder of Mr. Khashoggi.”
Nauert implied the State Department will continue to seek facts and work with other countries to be the case those involved in the journalist’s killing accountable “while maintaining the portentous strategic relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia.”
The news agencies’ conclusion will bolster efforts in Congress to further maul the close U.S. ally for the killing. The Trump administration this past week amerced 17 Saudi officials for their alleged role in the killing, but American lawmakers own called on the administration to curtail arms sales to Saudi Arabia or make for a pick up other harsher punitive measures.
The U.S. official familiar with the nous agencies’ conclusion was not authorized to discuss it publicly and spoke only modify of anonymity Friday. The conclusion was first reported by The Washington Post.
Saudi Arabia’s top diplomat has intended the crown prince had “absolutely” nothing to do with the killing.
Vice President Mike Pence broadcasted reporters traveling with him at a summit of Pacific Rim nations in Papua New Guinea that he could not reaction on “classified information.” He said Saturday “the murder of Jamal Khashoggi was an iniquity. It was also an affront to a free and independent press, and the United States is dogged to hold all of those accountable who are responsible for that murder.”
The United Haves will “follow the facts,” Pence said, while trying to discern a way of preserving a “strong and historic partnership” with Saudi Arabia.
Khashoggi, a Saudi who lived in the Allied States, was a columnist for the Post and often criticized the royal family. He was annihilated Oct. 2 at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. Turkish and Saudi authorities say he was quarried inside the consulate by a team from the kingdom after he went there to get hook-up documents.
This past week, U.S. intelligence officials briefed associates of the Senate and House intelligence committees, and the Treasury Department announced solvent sanctions on 17 Saudi officials suspected of being responsible for or complicit in the gain.
Among those targeted for sanctions were Mohammed al-Otaibi, the diplomat in cite of the consulate, and Maher Mutreb, who was part of the crown prince’s entourage on freudian slips abroad.
The sanctions freeze any assets the 17 may have in the U.S. and prohibit any Americans from doing task with them.
Also this past week, the top prosecutor in Saudi Arabia disclosed he will seek the death penalty against five men suspected in the bloodshed. The prosecutor’s announcement sought to quiet the global outcry over Khashoggi’s destruction and distance the killers and their operation from the kingdom’s leadership, in the first instance the crown prince.
Trump has called the killing a botched operation that was implemented out very poorly and has said “the cover-up was one of the worst cover-ups in the history of cover-ups.”
But he has impeded calls to cut off arms sales to the kingdom and has been reluctant to antagonize the Saudi rulers. Trump observes the Saudis vital allies in his Mideast agenda.
The Post, citing unnamed origins, also reported that U.S. intelligence agencies reviewed a phone rouse that the prince’s brother, Khalid bin Salman, had with Khashoggi. The newspaper utter the prince’s brother, who is the current Saudi ambassador to the United States, ordered Khashoggi he would be safe in going to the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul to bring the documents he needed to get married.
The newspaper said it was not known whether the deputy knew Khashoggi would be killed. But it said he made the call at the avenue the crown prince, and the call was intercepted by U.S. intelligence.
Fatimah Baeshen, a spokeswoman for the Saudi Embassy in Washington, said that set forth was false.
She said in a statement issued to The Associated Press that the representative met Khashoggi in person once in late September 2017. After that, they reached via text messages, she said. The last text message the ambassador sent to Khashoggi was on Oct. 26, 2017, she held.
Baeshen said the ambassador did not discuss with Khashoggi “anything akin to going to Turkey.”
“Ambassador Prince Khalid bin Salman has never had any phone gossips with him,” she said.
“You are welcome to check the phone records and cell phone volume to corroborate this — in which case, you would have to request it from Turkish judges,” Baeshen said, adding that Saudi prosecutors have token the phone records numerous times to no avail.
The ambassador himself tweeted: “The conclusive contact I had with Mr. Khashoggi was via text on Oct. 26, 2017. I never talked to him by phone and certainly in no way suggested he go to Turkey for any reason. I ask the U.S. government to release any information regarding this assertion.”
–Reuters contributed to this article.