The White House is facing calls to release a “shocking and disturbing” phone call between Donald Trump and the Saudi Crown Prince at the centre of the gruesome murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
One day after the president insisted Mohammed bin Salman had nothing to do with Khashoggi’s killing, despite U.S. intelligence officials concluding he ordered the hit, a former Trump national security insider has claimed there is explosive evidence to the contrary.
Virginia Congressman Eugene Vindman was a National Security Council staffer under the first Trump administration. His work included reviewing certain calls between the president and foreign leaders.
He claims that one phone call he reviewed undercut Trump’s astonishing defense of the Crown Prince in the Oval Office on Tuesday, when he said of Khashoggi’s murder by Saudi agents: “Things happen.”
“During my tenure on Trump’s White House National Security Council staff, I reviewed many of Trump’s calls with foreign leaders. Of all the calls I reviewed, two stood out as the most problematic,” said Vindman, a retired Army officer-turned-Democratic Congressman. “The first, we all know, was between President Trump and President Zelensky, which resulted in President Trump’s first impeachment. The second was between President Trump and Mohammed bin Salman.
“After the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, I reviewed a call between the president and the Saudi crown prince. The American people and the Khashoggi family deserve to know what was said on that call. If history is any guide, the receipts will be shocking.”
The Daily Beast has asked the White House if it would be prepared to release the transcript, but White House officials have yet to answer.
Seven years after Khashoggi’s murder cast the prince as an international pariah, Trump rolled out the red carpet for Salman on Tuesday, welcoming him with a military flyover, a horse procession, and Saudi flags draped across the White House and South Lawn.
The president also hosted a dinner for the crown prince last night. Guests included Elon Musk, who is back in Trump’s good graces, as well as soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo, Apple chief executive Tim Cook, Nvidia chief Jensen Huang, and billionaire investor Bill Ackerman.
But it was Trump’s earlier comments in the Oval Office that stunned Americans, and prompted Vindman to call for the phone call transcript to be released.
Asked about Khashoggi, a dual U.S. citizen who was murdered and dismembered with a bone saw by Saudi agents in 2018, Trump said on Tuesday: “You’re mentioning someone that was extremely controversial. A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about. Whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen,” he said.
He also said of the prince: “He knew nothing about it and we can leave it at that. You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that.”
Khashoggi was longtime Washington Post columnist known for his criticism of the Saudi kingdom. He was assassinated and dismembered at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018, after going there to get paperwork for his upcoming marriage.
But according to veteran reporter Bob Woodward, Trump once bragged about protecting Salman from Congressional scrutiny after the killing, which Trump’s own CIA pinned on the crown prince.
“I saved his ass,” Trump is quoted as saying in Woodward’s book, Rage. “I was able to get Congress to leave him alone. I was able to get them to stop.”
The Saudi royal, however, has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and told reporters on Tuesday, “It’s really painful to hear that anyone is losing his life for no real purpose.
“We did all the right steps in terms of investigation, etc. in Saudi Arabia and we’ve improved our system to be sure that nothing happened like that.”
Trump was also forced to defend his family’s business interests in Saudi Arabia, insisting he had no conflicts of interest as president because he had “nothing to do with the family business.”
This week, for instance, the Trump Organization and its Saudi-based development partner, Dar Al Arkan, announced a project allowing cryptocurrency investors to buy into Trump-branded real estate projects.
It also has Trump-branded projects in the capital of Riyadh, a Trump Tower planned in the port city of Jeddah, and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, runs a private equity firm that has taken $2 billion from a fund led by the crown prince.
But speaking on CNN on Wednesday morning ahead of Trump and the crown prince attending a Saudi investment forum, Vindman said the call he reviewed was equally disturbing and shocking “in light of the enrichment that the Trump family has received in the ensuing years.”
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