Hanan Elatr Khashoggi joined Democrats who have raised questions about whether TTrump personally benefited from his connection to the Saudi crown prince.
The widow of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, murdered in 2018, asked this Friday for the release of the transcript of the 2019 telephone call between the President of the United States and Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Hanan Elatr Khashoggi joined Democrats who have raised questions about whether TTrump personally benefited from his connection to the Saudi crown prince.
The journalist’s widow appeared at the Capitol this morning, following Trump’s rejection of the US intelligence results, which indicated that the Prince Mohammed was probably guilty of his husband’s murder in October 2018.
Trump this week bestowed upon the Saudi ruler some of Washington’s highest honors for a foreign dignitary, deepening the trade and military relationship between the two countries. Saudi intelligence officers and a forensic doctor killed and dismembered Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Arabian Consulate in Istanbul in 2018.
“There is no justification for kidnapping, torturing, killing and dismembering him,” said an emotional Hanan Elatr Khashoggi during a press conference. “This is a terrorist act,” he added.
The demand in Congress for the Trump administration to release transcripts of the calls is being led by Representative Eugene Vindman, a first-time Democrat from Virginia who was deputy legal advisor to the National Security Council during current US President Donald Trump’s first term.
Vindman, who had access to the transcript of Trump’s phone call with Prince Mohammed, declined Friday to elaborate on the classified document but said it used “the terminology of quid pro quo, the subsequent benefits that the president obtained.”
Democratic lawmakers also highlighted that Trump’s family has major businesses in Saudi Arabia, which have at times benefited from the prince’s direct involvement.
The situation brings echoes of the first process of “impeachment” of Trump regarding his July 2019 call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in which he asked the new Ukrainian president to give him a “favor” which was to investigate his presidential rival, Joe Biden. At the time, TTrump eventually released a transcript of the call with Zelenskyy, in which he also said he would withhold $400 million in military aid.
Vindman, then on the security council, also saw the transcript of that call and said that of all the calls he heard in his work, the calls with Zelenskyy and Prince Mohammed stood out as the most concerning. The deputy classified the transcript of the call with the Saudi ruler as “shocking”. “The Khashoggi family and the American people deserve to know what was said in that call.”he added.
When asked whether the White House would release the transcript, White House communications director Steven Cheung said in a statement that Vindman was “a resentful parliamentarian who no one takes seriously. He is a serial liar and was part of the hoax related to Ukraine’s perfect call, in which the Ukrainian president himself said so.”
Vindman’s twin brother, then an Army officer, Lieutenant Colonel Alex Vindman, also worked on the National Security Council at the time and played a prominent role in Trump’s impeachment in 2019. But he was not as public a figure in that impeachment trial as his brother.
However, after the Senate voted to acquit Trump on House impeachment charges, the White House removed Alex Vindman from the council and also removed Eugene Vindman. The latter ran for office representing Northern Virginia last year.
The Trump administration is unlikely to voluntarily release the transcript of the 2019 call with Prince Mohammed. Democratic lawmakers, who are in the minority, also have little power to force its release.
And they will also avoid speculating whether Trump’s relationship with Prince Mohammed will be grounds for another impeachment investigation if they regain the House next year.
