Jamal Khashoggi was a Saudi journalist that was murdered in Istanbul under orders from Mohammed bin Salman (MBS). That much is clear from the available media coverage. Nothing happens under the MBS regime without his knowledge, therefore the murder was committed with his consent.
Trump, however depends on the Saudi royal family for his finances. Therefore, Trump has an inherent interest in protecting MBS and his government. But, because Republicans cannot help themselves but be awful, a whisper campaign has been started by Republicans to paint Khashoggi as deserving of whatever it was that happened to him. The party that claimed to be on the side of freedom fighters now shows its true colors: party over country. Furthermore, the party that supposedly stands against Sharia law is now defending the crown prince most responsible for exporting militant Islam.
An element of the Republican smear campaign against Khashoggi involves his past affinity for the Muslim Brotherhood, and his interviews with Osama Bin Laden. However, this requires believing two contradictory things at once. First, Republicans maintain that US intelligence services must be afforded every tool, including torture, to prevent terrorism against the United States. This, the Republican narrative goes, allows the CIA and the NSA to remain the premier intelligence services in the world.
This means that US intelligence services are keenly aware of who is who and who has done what in terms of allegiance with terrorism. It therefore makes no sense that Khashoggi could have been allowed to have been a contributor to the Washington Post. Much less, reside in the United States. Would the CIA sit idly while a dangerous terrorist was publishing under their noses in DC? Of course not. The fact that the intelligence agencies let Mr. Khashoggi go about his business speaks volumes about their belief that he was not a terrorist sympathizer.
How do we know Khashoggi was murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul? We do because the Turkish government has been shouting from the rooftops that they have audio evidence of the gruesome murder. So, were the Turks spying on the Saudis? Of course they were and they believe that revealing their sources and methods is of less importance than showing to the world the despicable nature of the MBS regime. For all the dictatorial tendencies of Erdogan, we must keep in mind that Turkey is a NATO ally with aspirations of joining the European Union. The Turks had nothing to gain by remaining quiet.
Notwithstanding Trump’s bizarre claims that “rogue killers” had murdered Khashoggi, what is the most likely immediate outcome? Well, the Turks have already identified many of the men who were present in the murder of Khashoggi. What will happen next is that, under pressure from the international community, the MBS regime will offer a few scapegoats and claim those men acted independently.
MBS has already played the card of pretending the murder was an interrogation gone wrong, so the next claim will be one of innocence on the part of the government. MBS will proffer these men as individuals who had the bad luck of having Khashoggi die on them. But these men will proclaim they acted alone. This will be a page borrowed from the Pan American flight 103 bombing, where Libyan agents claimed to have acted without the knowledge of president Gaddafi. The murder of Khashoggi is part and parcel of the features of a dictatorship. That the MBS regime thought it could act outside its borders is reminiscent of the car-bomb murder of Orlando Letelier in Washington DC by the Chilean government. Chile paid no great price for carrying out a terrorist attack on US soil, so Saudi Arabia will pay little for what they did in Istanbul. What MBS has in his pocket is the full after-the-fact complicity of Donald Trump and of the Republican establishment in the murder of Khashoggi.