Gina Haspel met with a select group of senators on Tuesday to discuss Saudi involvement in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. If the goal was to “mollify lawmakers,” as The New York Times reported beforehand, it doesn’t seem to have worked.
Several senators, including Republicans Bob Corker of Tennessee and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, have indicated their discomfort with the Trump administration’s inaction on the Khashoggi killing.* Last week, the Senate voted 63 to 37 to consider limiting the president’s powers to support the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen. Matters escalated over the weekend, when The Wall Street Journal reported that the CIA was in possession of evidence that Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) had sent “at least 11 messages to his closest adviser, who oversaw the team that killed ... Khashoggi, in the hours before and after the journalist’s death in October.”
Early quotes from senators present at the briefing suggest they emerged, if anything, more persuaded of MBS’s likely involvement in the killing:
Corker: “He murdered him. No question in my mind. I had almost no question before. I have no question whatsoever now.”
— Andrew Desiderio (@desiderioDC) December 4, 2018
Corker: “Let me just put it this way. I think if he was in front of a jury, he would have a unanimous verdict in about 30 minutes. Guilty. A guilty verdict.”
— Andrew Desiderio (@desiderioDC) December 4, 2018
Menendez says he’s “more convinced than I was before” that the US should address Yemen war and Khashoggi killing
— Andrew Desiderio (@desiderioDC) December 4, 2018
.@LindseyGrahamSC, speaking after the Haspel briefing on #Khashoggi, said that he “cannot support arm sales to Saudi Arabia” as long as MBS is the leader of Saudi Arabia.
— Jennifer Hansler (@jmhansler) December 4, 2018
“There’s not a smoking gun, there’s a smoking saw," the GOP senator said.
Remarkable unanimity between Republicans and Democrats after Haspel briefing. Member after member say it’s crystal clear that MBS is involved in murder and the WH is willfully ignoring evidence. But members are not on the same page yet about a legislative response.
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) December 4, 2018
As Jeet Heer previously pointed out in The New Republic, President Trump has adopted a posture of epistemological helplessness with regard to the killing, both refusing to listen to the tape of Khashoggi’s murder and saying no one can ever “really know” what happened. He has also repeatedly inflated the value of U.S.-Saudi arms deals.
*This post previously misidentified the state that Lindsey Graham represents.