undercut by MBS’s statements to Kushner and Bolton had they been widely known, further discrediting the Saudis’ cover story that the kingdom bore no ill will toward Khashoggi.209 The same can be said for MBS’s subsequent public statement that “the incident that happened is very painful, for all Saudis,” as by then MBS had privately told the Trump administration that he in fact believed Khashoggi to be a violent radical.210 And the same would be true again for statements made publicly by MBS’s brother, the man who lured Khashoggi to his death but posthumously called him a “friend” who had given “a great portion of his life to serv[ing] his country.”211
Whether Kushner secretly has WhatsApp conversations with MBS between Khashoggi’s disappearance on October 2 and the MBS-Kushner-Bolton call on October 10—or between October 10 and October 15, when important new details in the Khashoggi case emerge—is unknown, though the New York Times will suggest that during this period “Kushner and [MBS] … continue[] to chat informally,” the Daily Beast will write that “their first-name-basis exchanges continued after October 2,” and the Washington Post will note of their communications during this time frame that “Kushner and [MBS] have had private, one-on-one phone calls that were not always set up through normal channels so the conversations could be memorialized.”212 Even the Saudis will admit that, as to private communications between Kushner and MBS, “routine calls do exist from time to time.”213
In November, however, any confusion on this key point ends, as the Washington Post reports that several “people familiar with the matter” say Kushner and MBS spoke “multiple times” between October 2 and October 9.214 The sources will refuse to say “how many phone calls the crown prince and Kushner have had since Khashoggi’s disappearance” beyond saying there was more than one.215 The Post will further report that in the days immediately after Khashoggi’s October 2 disappearance, MBS was expressing to many of those he spoke to that he was “puzzled by the high level of concern about Khashoggi” because “he considered [him] part of the Muslim Brotherhood as well as an agent of Qatar.”216 It is unknown whether MBS references Qatar in his private conversations with Kushner during this period, though Trump’s son-in-law had repeatedly expressed his support for MBS’s blockade against that country, and Trump himself had falsely and publicly attacked Qatar, following the initiation of the Saudi-led blockade, as a state sponsor of terrorism.217
On October 11, the day after Kushner and Bolton speak to MBS by phone, a Saudi chemist, Ahmed Abdulaziz Aljanobi, and a toxicologist, Khaled Yahya Al Zharani, arrive in Istanbul to, per Sabah, a Turkish daily newspaper, “clean up any leftover evidence” from the Khashoggi murder scene.218 The Saudis will not allow Turkish investigators into their consulate in Istanbul until October 14.219
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In early October 2018, Erik Prince is in Afghanistan, pushing his proposal to privatize the war there with the Afghan government. According to the Washington Post, the Afghans believe Prince “has the ear—and the potential backing [for a privatization plan]—of the U.S. president.”220 The Post adds that “Prince has a willing audience in President Trump, who is known to be frustrated with the cost and slow progress of the [Afghan war] strategy he adopted a year ago.”221
Meanwhile, in Riyadh, MBS and the Saudi government issue numerous misstatements to the press and others about Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. On October 2, Saudi consulate officials falsely tell Khashoggi’s fiancée, when she inquires about his whereabouts after he’s been inside the consulate for two hours, that Khashoggi “had already left the building through a backdoor.” On October 5, MBS tells Bloomberg News that his understanding is that Khashoggi left the consulate safe and healthy after “a few minutes or one hour.” On October 6, Saudi officials open the consulate to the press to “prove” that Khashoggi is not in the building, but do not allow any forensic examination of the property. On October 8, MBS’s brother Prince Khalid bin Salman tells Axios that allegations that Khashoggi is missing, detained, or dead are “absolutely false and baseless.” On October 10, a Saudi government-owned media outlet calls pictures of an “assassination squad” entering the Saudi consulate on October 2 “misreported news” that is the product of “dubious sources and orchestrated media campaigns.” And on October 11, Al Arabiya, a Saudi news outlet, calls the members of al-Qahtani’s assassination squad “tourists.”222 As late as October 15—when Trump seems to still credit King Salman’s denial of any knowledge of Khashoggi’s