Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman described slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi as a dangerous Islamist days after his disappearance in a phone call with President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and national security adviser John Bolton, according to people familiar with the discussion.
In the call, which occurred before the kingdom publicly acknowledged Khashoggi’s death, the crown prince urged Kushner and Bolton to preserve the U.S.-Saudi alliance and said the journalist was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, a group long opposed by Bolton and other senior Trump officials.
The attempt to criticize Khashoggi in private stands in contrast to the Saudi government’s later public statements decrying his death as a “terrible mistake” and “terrible tragedy.”
“The incident that happened is very painful, for all Saudis,” Mohammed, the kingdom’s de facto leader, said during a panel discussion last week. “The incident is not justifiable.”
The Saudi ambassador to the United States, Khalid bin Salman, described Khashoggi last month as a “friend” who dedicated “a great portion of his life to serve his country.”
In a statement released to The Washington Post, Khashoggi’s family called the characterization of the columnist as a dangerous Islamist inaccurate.
“Jamal Khashoggi was not a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. He denied such claims repeatedly over the past several years,” the family said. “Jamal Khashoggi was not a dangerous person in any way possible. To claim otherwise would be ridiculous.”
A person familiar with the discussion said Bolton did not signal that he endorsed the crown prince’s characterization of Khashoggi during the call.
A Saudi official denied Wednesday that the crown prince made the allegations, saying that “routine calls do exist from time to time” between the young leader and top U.S. officials but that “no such commentary was conveyed.”
Saudi Arabia has faced international condemnation for its shifting accounts of Khashoggi’s disappearance Oct. 2 at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.
The kingdom initially said Khashoggi walked out of the consulate unharmed but then said Saudi agents had accidentally killed him in a fistfight, and more recently announced that it had evidence that his killing was “premeditated.”
Analysts said the crown prince’s efforts to discredit Khashoggi in private suggested a two-faced attempt at damage control.
“This is character assassination added to premeditated murder,” said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA official who is a scholar at the Brookings Institution.
The White House declined to discuss sensitive conversations with the Saudis or say how many phone calls the crown prince and Kushner have had since Khashoggi’s disappearance. Mohammed has spoken to Kushner multiple times, according to people familiar with the matter, but the most recent call with Bolton and Kushner happened Oct. 9.
Officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic.
Other Middle East leaders have come to the crown prince’s defense. In recent days, Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have reached out to the Trump administration to express support for the crown prince, arguing that he is an important strategic partner in the region, said people familiar with the calls.
Israel, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates have united behind the Trump administration’s efforts to bring pressure on Iran and force through a Middle East peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinians.
Other U.S. allies, notably Germany, Britain and France, have voiced serious concern about what happened to Khashoggi, who wrote opinion articles critical of the Saudi leadership in The Washington Post.
The Trump administration revoked the visas or made travel ineligible for 21 Saudi nationals implicated by Turkey and Saudi Arabia in Khashoggi’s death.
As U.S. officials contemplate a more robust response, Kushner has emphasized the importance of the U.S.-Saudi alliance in the region, said people familiar with the conversations.
Other officials at the State Department and Pentagon, however, have said the options under consideration could include a clear discipline of the Saudi government or a demand to end the Saudi-led blockade of Qatar or wind down the war in Yemen. Officials cautioned that no decision has been made, and Trump has expressed little desire to significantly alter U.S.-Saudi relations, but there is an interest in a full vetting of the potential options.
Kushner’s efforts to carefully cultivate a relationship with the heir to the Saudi throne make him a critical voice in deciding the Trump administration’s response. After several private talks early in the administration, Kushner championed Mohammed as a reformer poised to usher the ultraconservative, oil-rich monarchy into modernity. Kushner privately argued for months last year that Mohammed would be key to crafting a Middle East peace plan, and that with the prince’s blessing, much of the Arab world would follow.
It was Kushner who pushed his father-in-law to make his first foreign trip as president to Riyadh, against objections from then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and warnings from Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. In the early days of the administration, Kushner often preferred to talk to the crown prince privately but now coordinates his conversations with the National Security Council.
Kushner visited the crown prince at his palace in a secret October 2017 trip, a plan so closely held that it caught some White House and intelligence officials by surprise.
The two 30-somethings stayed up late into the evening alone discussing the prospects of Kushner’s Middle East peace plan. A few days later, the prince ordered the house arrest of dozens of rival royals and imprisonment of other enemies in a bid to solidify his control of the government. The White House and the Saudis have denied Kushner approved the power grab.
Saudi officials had made no secret of their antipathy toward Khashoggi, including expressing consternation last year when he began writing a regular column for The Post. In the days after his disappearance — before the Saudis acknowledged his death in Istanbul — a person close to the royal palace said Mohammed was puzzled by the high level of concern about Khashoggi, whom he considered part of the Muslim Brotherhood as well as an agent of Qatar.
Khashoggi’s family said his views were much more nuanced than those described by Saudi officials. “Although he sympathized with certain objectives of the Muslim Brotherhood, he also sharply disagreed with many of their positions, especially toward Saudi Arabia,” the family said in its statement.
Saudi Arabia severed relations with Qatar last year, charging among other things that it harbored Muslim Brotherhood “terrorists.” Although the Saudis maintained a cordial relationship with the Brotherhood for decades after its founding in Egypt as an Islamist political and social movement, Riyadh declared it a terrorist organization after the upheavals of the Arab Spring.
Many Republican lawmakers and Middle East analysts on the right agreed with the Saudi assessment — in 2015, Rep. Mike Pompeo of Kansas, now Trump’s secretary of state, co-sponsored a resolution calling on the State Department to designate the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization. During Trump’s campaign, several prominent supporters, including Bolton, called for such a designation.
Egypt’s Sissi, whose military government overthrew an elected Muslim Brotherhood-allied government in 2013, and Israel’s political right share that view.
Trump considered such an action early in his administration but was dissuaded by Pompeo, who had become CIA director, and others in the administration. They noted that while the designation would please some Arab partners, others in the region would reject it. The Brotherhood has mainstream political stature and legitimacy in Jordan, Turkey and Morocco, among other countries.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a rival of the Saudi crown prince, has called for Saudi Arabia to be held accountable for the killing. Erdogan called Trump on Thursday to talk about a handful of issues including the Khashoggi investigation, according to people familiar with the conversation, but neither government acknowledged in official readouts of the call that the investigation was discussed.
Karen DeYoung and Tom Hamburger contributed to this report.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the year in which a Muslim Brotherhood-allied government was overthrown in Egypt. It was 2013, not 2011.
