US Senators on Monday left a closed-door briefing with officials of the administration of US President Donald Trump deeply frustrated by the lack of new information on the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, with some raising the prospect of placing new sanctions on the Saudi Arabian government.
Lawmakers had instructed Trump to order an investigation into Khashoggi’s killing by invoking the Global Magnitsky Act.
The request was made in October last year, which gave the president 120 days to respond, but the White House declined to submit a report by the deadline, angering members of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
US Senator Bob Menendez, the top Democrat on the panel, called the briefing “a farce” and said Trump still needs to give US Congress an answer.
“The law’s very clear, there needed to be a determination,” Menendez said.
US Senator Chris Murphy said the briefing contained “zero” new information. He criticized the lack of an intelligence official among the briefers, a move he described as “purposeful.”
“They don’t want us to have a conversation about the intelligence,” he said, referring to the White House. “These folks had no new information and were not permitted to give us any new information.”
Khashoggi, a Washington Post journalist, was killed in a Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul last year by Saudi Arabian agents. The Saudi Arabian government said the slaying was carried out by rogue operatives and denied Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman had any involvement.
US lawmakers have said they believe the Saudi Arabian crown prince ordered the killing, but Trump has been reluctant to place blame.
Absent a determination from Trump, Menendez said the US Senate has to do something “unless it is willing to accept the death of a US resident, a journalist.”
“The Senate will have to decide if it’s going to impose its own sanctions,” said US Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican member of the committee.
The dispute over Khashoggi’s death comes at a point of rising tensions between the White House and US Congress over the US-Saudi Arabian relationship, fueled in part by the Trump administration’s involvement in Yemen’s civil war.
With US weapons and logistical support, Saudi Arabia is fighting a protracted war in the nation, creating the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
After Khashoggi’s death last year, the US Senate passed a resolution with an overwhelming majority calling for the US to end its support for the Yemen campaign, though that resolution did not pass the US House of Representatives.
The US Senate is expected to take up the issue again in the coming weeks, reviving the debate.
While it is unclear if the Yemen resolution can again pass the US Senate, members of both parties made it clear they are not moving on from Khashoggi.
US Senator Jim Risch, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, released a statement pledging the investigation would continue.
“We will not let it go,” he said.
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