Things Happen: Trump, the Crown Prince and Killing Khashoggi
The Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is at it again. Gulling, wooing, and grinning his way into the establishment of another country, he is greasing palms and making deals. Effusive and flattering of his host, this time US President Donald Trump, he received a state welcome on November 18 rarely afforded visiting dignitaries: a red carpet viewing of fighter jets, a horse-mounted guard of honour, and a feast in the East Room. He was also promised the much-sought-after F-35 fighter jets as part of a defence arrangement, elevating Saudi Arabia to the status of a “major non-NATO ally”. Along the way, MBS has done much to deter those who wish to remind him of a wretched human rights record and the barbaric habits of a state he claims to be modernising.
The gaudy occasion risked being sullied by a question from Mary Bruce of ABC News. Intended for the Crown Prince, it inquired about his role behind the murder of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in a Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018. The death squad responsible for strangling and dismembering the unsuspecting Khashoggi had been dispatched with his blessing, numbering among them a forensic specialist, a bone saw, and a body double. Many of its members hailed from bin Salman’s own protective guard, the Rapid Intervention Force.
Trump’s intervention was abrupt: “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. But he [MBS] knew nothing about it. You don’t have to embarrass our guest.”
His guest has much to be embarrassed about, and more besides. With surliness and much petulant audacity, the opportunistic princeling has seized such power in the realm as to marginalise all other decision makers, including rival family members. The most important decisions, be they on vast investment agreements, the refurbishment of the country’s medieval bearing, or authorising the extrajudicial killing of an irritating scribbler, would issue from him.
To therefore suggest that the Crown Prince was ignorant of his own misdeeds is to fly in the face of hardened reality. When she was UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, and arbitrary killings, Agnès Callamard found that state responsibility for Khashoggi’s death was the only plausible conclusion. “His killing was the result of elaborate planning involving extensive coordination and significant human and financial resources. It was overseen, planned, and endorsed by high-level officials. It was premeditated.”
Most importantly, Trump’s breezy acquittal of MBS’s culpability resoundingly ignores the findings by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in a 2021 declassified report submitted to Congress by the then Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines. “We assess,” the report avers, “that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey to capture or kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.” This was the only reasonable conclusion given bin Salman’s “control of decisionmaking in the Kingdom”, the seminal role played by one of his key advisors and members of the Crown Prince’s protective detail in the operation, along with bin Salman’s appetite “for using violent measures to silence dissidents abroad, including Khashoggi.”
The report goes on to make a most telling observation: that the Crown Prince’s assumption (one might even say seizure) of “absolute control of the Kingdom’s security and intelligence organizations” since 2017 made it “highly unlikely that Saudi officials would have carried out an operation of this nature without” his approval. Some equivocation is expressed about “how far in advance Saudi officials decided to harm” Khashoggi.
Bin Salman, for his part, reverted to his role as high-minded reformer while citing the defence of mistake. This was at least partially in keeping with previous admissions that his hands were not entirely clean on the subject. (Khashoggi’s widow, Hanan, reiterated that point in an interview with BBC Newsnight.) It had been “painful for us in Saudi Arabia”, he told Bruce. “We did all the right steps of investigating, etc., in Saudi Arabia, and we’ve improved our system to be sure that nothing happens like that again. And it’s painful, and it was a huge mistake.” Trump also gave his guest the needed ballast: “What’s he done is incredible in terms of human rights and everything else.”
Since Khashoggi’s murder, the response from the Kingdom has been one of denial, distancing, and detachment. It has involved isolating the killers as wayward enthusiasts and adventurers, lacking the force of a mandate. They were to be the convenient scalps, the necessary sacrifices. Of the group, five were subsequently sentenced to death while three were given prison sentences. Saud al-Qahtani, bin Salman’s disseminator of venomous social media, along with Maj. Gen. Ahmed al-Asiri, were acquitted for lack of evidence. Callamard was compelled to remark that “The executioners were found guilty and sentenced to death,” while “those who ordered the executions not only walk free but have barely been touched by the investigation and the trial.” That’s the MBS version of modern Saudi Arabia for you.
Rep. Eugene Vindman—who was a White House national security lawyer at the time of the 2019 call—said it “would shock people if they knew what was said.”
Hanan Elatr Khashoggi and Rep. Eugene Vindman (D-Va.) stand outside the US Capitol in Washington, DC on November 21, 2025 with a sign reading “RELEASE THE TRANSCRIPT” of President Donald Trump’s phone conversation with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman following the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
(Photo: Rep. Eugene Vindman/X)
Brett Wilkins
Nov 21, 2025
COMMON DREAMS
The widow of Jamal Khashoggi on Friday joined Democratic members of Congress in urging President Donald Trump to release the transcript of a phone conversation between the US leader and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman following the journalist’s 2018 kidnapping and gruesome murder by Saudi operatives.
Speaking outside the US Capitol in Washington, DC flanked by Democratic members of Congress including Reps. Eugene Vindman of Virginia and Jamie Raskin of Maryland, Hanan Elatr Khashoggi said she is seeking the lawmakers’ help “to get the contents of the conversation between President Trump and MBS to get the truth.”
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“Try as much as you can to save the democratic freedom of America,” Khashoggi implored the audience at the gathering. “Do not be a copy of the Middle East dictator countries. We look to America as our role model of modern civilization. Please maintain it.”
Vindman urged the declassification and release of what he called a “highly disturbing” 2019 call between Trump and MBS—who US intelligence agencies say ordered Khashoggi’s murder—the contents of which the congressman claimed “would shock people if they knew what was said.”
At the time of the call, Vindman was serving as a lawyer on Trump’s National Security Council, where his duties included reviewing presidential communications with foreign leaders.
“All week, I’ve urged the president to release this transcript,” Vindman said during his remarks at Friday’s press conference. “Yesterday, I sent him a letter with 37 of my colleagues demanding its release. We will continue pressing until the American people get the truth.”
“Given President Trump’s disturbing and counterfactual defense of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman this week, I felt compelled to speak up on behalf of the Khashoggi family and the country I serve,” he added.
On Tuesday, Trump warmly welcomed the crown prince to the White House, calling him a “respected man,” designating Saudi Arabia a major non-NATO ally, and announcing the planned sale of F-35 fighter jets to the kingdom.
Trump also threatened an ABC News reporter who attempted to ask MBS about his role in Khashoggi’s murder, calling the victim “somebody that was extremely controversial” and whom “a lot of people didn’t like.”
“Whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen,” Trump said as MBS smugly looked on, dubiously adding that the crown prince “knew nothing about it.”
Responding to Trump’s comments, Khashoggi’s widow said during Friday’s press conference that “there is no justification to kidnap [Khashoggi], torture him, to kill him, and to cut him to pieces.”
“This is a terrorist act,” she added.
Khashoggi—a Washington Post columnist and permanent US resident—vanished in October 2018 while visiting the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Turkish officials said he was attacked, suffocated to death, and dismembered with a bone saw inside the consular compound. One Turkish investigator said Khashoggi was tortured in front the Saudi consul-general and dismembered while he was still alive.
Saudi officials initially denied that Khashoggi died in the consulate but later confirmed his death, claiming it resulted from a “fistfight” gone wrong. In 2019, a Saudi court sentenced five people to death and three others to prison terms in connection with Khashoggi’s murder. However, the death sentences were later commuted.
The Central Intelligence Agency concluded that MBS ordered Khashoggi’s murder. Saudi officials refuted the CIA’s findings. Trump also expressed skepticism at his own intelligence agency’s conclusion, which came as the US was selling or seeking to sell billions of dollars worth of arms to Saudi Arabia despite its rampant war crimes in Yemen.
Hopes that former President Joe Biden would take a different approach to Saudi Arabia over war crimes and Khashoggi’s murder were dashed as his administration continued selling arms to the kingdom and argued in federal court that MBS should be granted sovereign immunity in a civil case filed by the slain journalist’s widow.
Trump has sought closer ties to Saudi Arabia during his second term as he courts up to $1 trillion in investments from the kingdom and works to broker diplomatic normalization between Riyadh and Israel.
The New York Times reported Monday that the Trump Organization—which is run by the president’s two eldest sons—is “in talks that could bring a Trump-branded property” to Saudi Arabia, raising concerns about possible corruption and conflicts of interest.
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