Trump Is More Loyal to Dictators Than to the U.S.

When the CIA catches dictators doing bad things, the dictators often pay lobbyists to lie about what’s been discovered. Trump kept looking “for ways to avoid pinning the blame” on MBS, even after he was “shown evidence of the prince’s involvement,” according to aides who spoke to the Washington Post. A reporter asked him, “What about the CIA assessment that the crown prince of Saudi Arabia ordered the killing of Jamal Khashoggi?” “They didn’t make a determination,” Trump replied. On Nov. 27, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said of MBS and the murder: “We haven’t seen definitive evidence come from our intelligence community that ties him directly to that.” On Nov. 28, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters, “There is no direct reporting connecting the crown prince to the order to murder Jamal Khashoggi.” On Nov. 29, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis added, “We have no smoking gun that the crown prince was involved.” All of these statements were carefully couched—definitive, directly, order, smoking gun—to be technically defensible. The second was Qahtani’s history of seeking explicit permission from MBS for “sensitive operations.” The third was a 2017 comment from MBS, allegedly suggesting that if he couldn’t coax Khashoggi back to Saudi Arabia, “We could possibly lure him outside Saudi Arabia and make arrangements.” The fourth was the smoking gun: MBS and Qahtani had exchanged at least 11 electronic messages “in the hours before and after” the murder, while Qahtani was “in direct communication with the team’s leader in Istanbul.” The Journal quoted from the CIA document: “We assess it is highly unlikely this team of operators … carried out the operation without Muhammed bin Salman’s authorization.” Facing a revolt in Congress, the administration finally yielded to senators’ demands for access to Haspel.