Michael Flynn, who was at the time both advising candidate Trump on national security matters and secretly a Turkish agent—and it found no evidence admissible in a U.S. court to establish that Gulen had committed acts that would be considered criminal in the United States.305
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On October 20, Saudi Arabia confesses that Khashoggi was killed in its consulate in Istanbul, though it says his death occurred after a “fight broke out with the people he met there,” calling it a “fistfight” and implying that Khashoggi could have been partially responsible for his own demise.306 Trump declares that the explanation is credible.307
The Washington Post, Khashoggi’s employer, responds immediately to the Saudis’ new narrative with a statement that reads, in part, “The government of Saudi Arabia has shamefully and repeatedly offered one lie after another in the nearly three weeks since Jamal Khashoggi disappeared in their Istanbul consulate. Offering no proof, and contrary to all available evidence, they now expect the world to believe that Jamal died in a fight following a discussion. This is not an explanation; it is a coverup. President Trump, Congress, and leaders of the civilized world should demand to see verifiable evidence. The Saudis cannot be allowed to fabricate a face-saving solution to an atrocity that appears to have been directed by the highest levels of their government.”308
On October 22, Kushner tells the media that the White House is still in the “fact-finding phase” with respect to Khashoggi’s death, even as Trump tries to downplay Kushner’s relationship with MBS: “They’re two young guys. Jared doesn’t know him well or anything. They are just two young people. They are the same age. They like each other, I believe,” Trump says.309 On October 23, MBS demands that Khashoggi’s son appear before him so that the two can be photographed shaking hands.310 The same day, Erdogan declares in a televised speech that Khashoggi’s death was a “ferocious” and “brutal” pre-planned murder—an allegation the audiotape of the event will subsequently confirm.311 Forty-eight hours after Erdogan’s declaration, Saudi prosecutors announce their agreement with Erdogan on the cause of Khashoggi’s death, agreeing that it was a premeditated murder, though the prosecutors do not concede that MBS had any involvement in it.312
MBS soon thereafter receives a full-throated public defense from both a member of the Red Sea Conspiracy and an affiliate of the conspiracy: per the Washington Post, “Egyptian President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reach[] out to the Trump administration to express support for the crown prince, arguing that he is an important strategic partner in the region.… Israel, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates have united behind the Trump administration’s efforts to bring pressure on Iran.”313 Meanwhile, America’s long-standing allies in NATO, particularly Germany, Britain, and France, “voice[] serious concern about what happened to Khashoggi.”314
From the moment Khashoggi’s disappearance—then his death—becomes an international issue, “Kushner and the prince [keep] calling and texting one another,” according to the Daily Beast, which notes that these regular communications between the president’s son-in-law and the architect of the Washington Post journalist’s assassination are “first-name-basis exchanges.”315 The New York Times notes that such “private, informal conversations” have been occurring “since the early months of the Trump administration.”316 Even after the White House chief of staff mandated that “National Security Council staff members should participate in all calls with foreign leaders,” Kushner ignored the directive, the Times reports, and “kept chatting” with MBS in “text messages and phone calls.”317
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By mid-November, the CIA has “concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman personally ordered the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi,” per CNN.318 Kushner quickly becomes “the prince’s most important defender inside the White House,” reports the New York Times, citing sources familiar with internal White House discussions.319 The CIA gives a briefing to the Senate on the evidence it has uncovered. Afterward Trump’s close ally in the Senate, Lindsey Graham, comments that he entered the briefing believing MBS responsible for Khashoggi’s murder, and “left the briefing with high confidence that my initial confidence [was] correct.”320 “There’s not a smoking gun,” says Graham, “there’s a smoking saw.”321
The Trump administration sanctions seventeen Saudis “for their role in Khashoggi’s killing” and revokes the travel visas of twenty-one people in total, but it does not sanction MBS.322 The Saudis continue to insist MBS “knew nothing of the operation,” even as its prosecutors seek the death penalty for five men connected to the crown prince.323 That the killers of an American resident had travel visas to the