The end of last week was the final date for the Trump administration to submit a congressional report answering whether the Saudi crown prince was responsible for the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in October. The administration let the deadline pass with little acknowledgment.
The snub drew outrage on the Hill. Under the terms of the Magnitsky Act — U.S. human rights legislation lawmakers had triggered shortly after Khashoggi’s killing — Trump had 120 days to respond to the request and then possibly move to impose further punitive sanctions. Anger over the killing of the Saudi citizen, a contributor to The Washington Post’s Global Opinions page, forged an unusual bipartisan consensus in Congress.
So far, the White House has doggedly refused to turn on its allies in Riyadh. It didn’t matter that the CIA’s own assessment was that the operation to abduct the dissident writer on a visit to Turkey was probably ordered by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman himself; a senior administration official released a statement arguing that the president “maintains his discretion to decline to act on congressional committee requests.”
View the complete February 13 article by Ishaan Tharoor on The Washington Post website here.