Defense Secretary James Mattis is backing up President Donald Trump’s position on the controversy surrounding the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
On Wednesday, Mattis repeated Trump’s claim that there is no “smoking gun” evidence to connect Khashoggi’s murder with the Arab kingdom’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is known by many as simply “MBS.” Like Trump has done, Mattis vowed that those responsible would be held accountable, but denied that the crown prince was the culprit.
“We have no smoking gun that the crown prince was involved, not the intelligence community or anyone else,” Mattis told reporters outside the Pentagon. “There is no smoking gun.”
Mattis: No Khashoggi “smoking gun”
Speaking to reporters after attending a Capitol Hill briefing with senators on U.S. military assistance to Saudi Arabia, Mattis said that he has not listened to an audiotape in Arabic that reportedly depicts Khashoggi’s killing in the Saudi Consulate in Turkey last month. Mattis added that he does not understand the language and does not believe the U.S. government even has the tape, but noted that he has read all the intelligence reports including an English transcript of what was allegedly said on the recording.
“We do not have the tapes. At least, I’m not aware that we do,” he said. “Our position has not changed. We expect accountability for all people involved.”
State Secretary Mike Pompeo, who joined Mattis at the briefing, echoed Mattis’ denial earlier Wednesday, saying that there was “no direct reporting” to substantiate the Crown Prince’s involvement.
The president issued a highly controversial statement last week in which he claimed that it may never be known who was responsible for Khashoggi’s murder and argued in favor of remaining allies with the Arab state despite the killing for economic and security benefits. His statement — which began with: “The world is a very dangerous place!” — was filled with Trump-ian idiosyncrasies and was widely criticized for taking the Crown Prince’s side despite reports that the CIA had linked MBS to the killing.
Cabinet members fail to sway Senate
Still, Trump has continued to push back against claims that the CIA has substantiated MBS’s involvement, prompting bipartisan blow-back that put his Cabinet surrogates in a tough spot on Wednesday. Pompeo and Mattis failed to convince the Senate at the closed-door briefing not to move ahead with a resolution to end America’s involvement in the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen’s civil war, with the Senate voting 63-37 in favor of exiting the conflict.
Pompeo and Mattis both argued ahead of the vote that severing ties with the Saudis would hurt America’s national security interest.
“Our security interests cannot be dismissed, even as we seek accountability for what President Trump described as the ‘unacceptable and horrible crime’ of Jamal Khashoggi’s murder, a crime which ‘our country does not condone,'” Mattis said in prepared remarks to the Senate.
Senators break with Trump
Wednesday’s bipartisan vote showed a rift between Trump, who is fighting to preserve America’s long-standing relationship with Saudi Arabia, and both Republican and Democrat senators who have demanded the kingdom be punished for the killing. Many senators were also unhappy that CIA chief Gina Haspel, who has reportedly heard the aforementioned tape, did not attend the briefing.
Some Democrats called Haspel’s absence a “cover-up” and even accused Trump of blocking Haspel from briefing them on the audiotape. The CIA said on Wednesday that the claim that “anyone told Director Haspel not to attend today’s briefing is false.”
But it wasn’t just Dems who criticized the executive branch’s handling of Khashoggi’s death. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who has long been a Trump ally, voted in favor of the resolution to end U.S. involvement in Yemen and even threatened to stonewall a spending bill until he is briefed on Khashoggi’s killing from the CIA.
“If that briefing is not given soon, it’s going to be hard for me to vote for any spending bill,” Graham told reporters. “I’m talking about any key vote anything you need me for to get out of town; I ain’t doing it until we hear from the CIA.”
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