Trump Calls Relations With Saudi Arabia ‘Excellent,’ While Congress Is Incensed

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Demonstrators on Monday held pictures of Jamal Khashoggi in front of the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul.CreditCreditOzan Kose/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

By Edward Wong, Eric Schmitt and Eileen Sullivan

Oct. 11, 2018

WASHINGTON — The suspected murder of a prominent Saudi journalist exposed a growing rift on Thursday between the White House and Congress over American policy on Saudi Arabia, as Republican lawmakers demanded an investigation of Jamal Khashoggi’s whereabouts even as President Trump declared his relations with Riyadh “excellent.”

The Saudi-led, United States-backed bombing campaign of Houthi rebels in Yemen — which has killed thousands of civilians — was already a source of tension between Congress and the Trump administration.

But last week’s disappearance of Mr. Khashoggi, a well-connected Saudi columnist for The Washington Post living in Virginia, incensed Republicans and Democrats in Congress, who accused the White House of moving too slowly in pressing the kingdom for answers.

“The Saudis will keep killing civilians and journalists as long as we keep arming and assisting them,” Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, said on Twitter on Thursday. “The President should immediately halt arms sales and military support to Saudi Arabia.”

But Mr. Trump quickly made clear he would not.

“What good does that do us?” Mr. Trump asked, speaking to reporters midday in the Oval Office.

“I would not be in favor of stopping a country from spending $110 billion — which is an all-time record — and letting Russia have that money and letting China have that money,” Mr. Trump said, referring to an arms deal with the Saudis, brokered last year, that the president has said will lead to new American jobs.

Earlier on Thursday, in an interview with Fox & Friends, Mr. Trump said American investigators were working with Turkish and Saudi officials to determine what happened to Mr. Khashoggi, who has not been seen since Oct. 2 after he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Turkish officials suspect a Saudi hit squad killed and dismembered Mr. Khashoggi inside the consulate.

The president said he and his administration are “looking at it very, very seriously” and soon expected to have more information.

“We want to find out what happened,” Mr. Trump said. “He went in and it doesn’t look like he came out.”

“We don’t like it,” Mr. Trump said. “I don’t like it. No good.” But he added that relations with the kingdom were “excellent.”

The pressure from Congress could force the White House and State Department to change important aspects of foreign policy — including, possibly, withdrawing support for the Saudi-led campaign in Yemen’s civil war. In June, a key vote on arms sales to the Saudis was narrowly approved, and future munitions sales have been held up.

On Wednesday, the leaders of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee sent a bipartisan letter to Mr. Trump demanding an investigation of whether “the highest ranking officials in the Government of Saudi Arabia” were responsible for human rights abuses in Mr. Khashoggi’s case.

The letter invoked a statute that Congress enacted in December 2016 which says the executive branch, upon receipt of such a letter, has 120 days to decide whether to sanction foreign officials.

It is not clear, however, whether the Trump administration will consider itself bound to comply if the president does not want to tangle with the Saudis. When former President Barack Obama signed the legislation creating that law, he issued a signing statement challenging it as an unconstitutional intrusion on executive power, and saying presidents would maintain “discretion to decline to act on such requests when appropriate.”

The Trump administration was widely criticized for its relative silence on Mr. Khashoggi’s disappearance until Monday, six days after he entered the Saudi consulate. Critics said the slow reaction could embolden leaders of Saudi Arabia and other authoritarian nations to carry out human rights abuses.

The intense scrutiny of Saudi Arabia and its crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, may strain his close relationship with Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and top Middle East adviser. Mr. Kushner has been cultivating the prince’s support for an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan, but King Salman of Saudi Arabia has so far rejected it.

Eileen Sullivan and Noah Weiland contributed reporting.