The media has NOT let go of a story about a WashPost journalist that went into a Saudi consulate in Turkey and never came out….
Donald Trump has tried to run interference for the Saudi Prince…
That hasn’t worked….
Republican members of Congress are undercutting Trump….
So?
We now have a response from the Saudi’s….
It doesn’t involve the Prince…
It is designed to make the situation go away…
Saudi Arabia acknowledged Friday that U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who had been missing for more than two weeks after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, is dead.
According to a press release translated by The New York Times, the Saudi government said that 18 Saudi nationals have been arrested and are being interrogated in connection to the case.
In the statement, the kingdom’s public prosecutor claimed that a physical altercation broke out between Khashoggi and men inside the consulate resulting in a “a fistfight that led to his death.”
Saudi Arabia has been under pressure to explain the disappearance of Khashoggi, a Saudi national who had been critical of the kingdom’s leadership and was living in Virginia. He was serving as an opinion contributor to The Washington Post….
Update…
More on the internal Royal response to all this….
What will the King do with his Prince?
So grave is the fallout from the disappearance of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi that King Salman has felt compelled to intervene, five sources with links to the Saudi royal family said.
Last Thursday, Oct. 11, the king dispatched his most trusted aide, Prince Khaled al-Faisal, governor of Mecca, to Istanbul to try to defuse the crisis.
World leaders were demanding an explanation and concern was growing in parts of the royal court that the king’s son Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, to whom he has delegated vast powers, was struggling to contain the fallout, the sources said.
During Prince Khaled’s visit, Turkey and Saudi Arabia agreed to form a joint working group to investigate Khashoggi’s disappearance. The king subsequently ordered the Saudi public prosecutor to open an inquiry based on its findings….
…
Despite these rare instances of pushback, several of the sources close to the royal family said that King Salman had grown increasingly detached from decisions taken by MbS.
“He has been living in an artificially-created bubble,” said one of the sources. Lately, though, the king’s advisers have grown frustrated and begun warning him of the risks of leaving the crown prince’s power unchecked….