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Trump sends CIA director to Turkey to review Khashoggi case
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump dispatched the director of the CIA to Turkey in a quest to get more information about the death of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi and weigh a possible U.S. response.
Trump said Monday he’s not satisfied with the explanations he’s heard about the Washington Post columnist and critic of the kingdom who died Oct. 2 at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. Saudi Arabia has said he was killed in a fistfight, but Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Tuesday that Khashoggi’s death was part of a planned operation.
“It appears, on the eve of the murder, 15 Saudi security personnel, intelligence officials and a forensics expert arrived in our country,” Erdogan said. “It has been ascertained that six of them left on Oct. 2” later that evening on two planes.
“The Saudi Arabian administration has taken an important step by admitting the murder,” Erdogan said. “As of now we expect of them to openly bring to light those responsible — from the highest ranked to the lowest — and to bring them to justice.”
On Monday, Trump told reporters at the White House: “We’re going to get to the bottom of it. We have people over in Saudi Arabia now. We have top intelligence people in Turkey.”
“We’re going to know a lot over the next two days about the Saudi situation,” said Trump. “It’s a very sad thing.”
The CIA declined to confirm that Gina Haspel, who directs the agency, is in Turkey. But a U.S. official said she is in the country to review the case. The official, who declined to disclose details about what Haspel is doing in Turkey, was not authorized to discuss the trip publicly and spoke only on condition of anonymity.
Trump spoke Sunday with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is the son of Saudi King Salman.
“He says he is not involved nor is the king,” Trump told USA Today in an interview aboard Air Force One Monday en route to a political rally in Texas. The newspaper said Trump declined to say whether he believed the crown prince’s denials. If their involvement was proven, Trump said: “I would be very upset about it. We’ll have to see.”
Trump characterized Khashoggi’s incident as a “plot gone awry” and told the newspaper he didn’t think the writer was deliberately lured into the consulate to be killed.
When he was asked late last week whether he thought Saudi Arabia’s claim that Khashoggi died in a fistfight was credible, the president answered: “I do. I do.”
That statement rankled members of Congress and former government officials who have accused Riyadh of trying to cover up the truth behind Khashoggi’s death or hide any evidence that the kingdom, particularly the crown prince, authorized it.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who has been trying to coax Trump into ending arms sales to Saudi Arabia, said Monday that it’s “laughable” to believe the crown prince was not involved in Khashoggi’s death.
Trump said any U.S. response should not involve scrapping billions of dollars in arms sales, which would hurt U.S.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump will continue to demand answers. “He’ll make a determination on what he wants to do once he feels like he has all of the information that he needs,” she said.
Whatever the U.S. response, U.S. ties with its Gulf ally have hit rough waters. The Khashoggi affair also has threatened to upend the relationship of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner with the crown prince.
The two men — both in their 30s, both trusted aides of older, familial leaders — struck a bond last spring and consulted with one another frequently in private calls in the months that followed. The crown prince, who is known in diplomatic circles as “MBS,” has drawn some praise in the West for his moves to modernize the kingdom and criticism for his government’s arrests of rivals and critics.
Trump now plays down the relationship, saying the crown prince and Kushner are “just two young guys.” But their back-channel relationship unnerved many in the Trump administration and Washington foreign policy establishment who feared that the White House was betting too big on the crown prince.
Kushner on Monday fended off criticism that the Trump administration was giving Saudi Arabia cover. He said administration officials have their “eyes wide open.”
“We’re getting facts in from multiple places and once those facts come in, the secretary of state will work with our national security team to help us determine what we want to believe, what we think is credible and what we think is not credible,” Kushner told CNN.
Even Trump, however, acknowledges that Kushner’s work on trying to craft peace between Israel and the Palestinians has been set back by Khashoggi’s death. “There are a lot of setbacks. This is a setback for that,” Trump told The Washington Post in a weekend phone interview.
Bruce Riedel, a former Middle East specialist for the CIA and National Security Council, said the Trump administration “desperately wants the Istanbul affair to go away and the MBS-Jared bromance obscured.”
An administration official who regularly deals with Kushner pushed back against claims that Kushner and the crown prince are joined at the hip. The official was not authorized to discuss the relationship and spoke only on condition of anonymity.
The official said Kushner — like other members of the administration, including Trump — believes Saudi Arabia should suffer some sort of consequence, but said Kushner also believes the U.S.-Saudi relationship “shouldn’t be blown up” because of the Khashoggi matter.
___
Associated Press writers Jonathan Lemire in New York and Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.
Deb Riechmann, The Associated Press
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Border Patrol Agent Lashes Out At Biden-Harris Admin, Calling Job ‘Migrant Concierge Service’ Amid Border Crisis
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
The border agent stated he is prepared to risk his career to bring attention to what he views as grave mismanagement and potential dangers posed by current border policies.
A Border Patrol agent criticized the recent changes in his role under the Biden-Harris administration, condemning it as transforming into a “migrant concierge service,” according to The New York Post Friday.
Zachary Apotheker, who joined the force in 2020, voiced his frustration over the shift in his duties under the Biden administration from intercepting drug traffickers and apprehending illegal entrants to what he now sees as aiding migrant entry, in an interview with the NYP. Apotheker highlighted concerns about security and vetting under President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, noting that over 8 million migrants have crossed the southern border since January 2021, including members of the Venezuelan prison gang, Tren de Aragua.
“I don’t want to bring people into the country. That’s not what I signed up to do,” Apotheker told NYP. Apotheker’s distress is further compounded by over 1.7 million illegal migrants who have evaded capture since Jan. 2021, as he shared encounters with victims of migrant-committed crimes, naming individuals and emphasizing the personal toll on him.
Border Patrol agent sounds off on job under Harris-Biden administration: ‘Not what I signed up to do’ https://t.co/ELqWSRIKLu pic.twitter.com/HAKH2ZEuzT
— New York Post (@nypost) September 13, 2024
“I’m an apolitical person and I just want to do my job and protect this country,” the agent said, the NYP reported. “When I see people from another country coming here, getting resources beyond what the American citizen can get, that’s where I have to draw the line. And then they’re going out and committing crimes and we’re still not removing them and American citizens are being killed, women are being raped.”
Apotheker and multiple Border Patrol sources have raised concerns to the NYP about the inadequate documentation for unaccompanied migrant children under 14, including missing biometric data, complicating their safe relocation to families or sponsors in the U.S. He highlighted a backlog in the immigration system, noting that 291,000 migrant children have been released in the U.S. without court dates, with an additional 32,000 failing to appear for their scheduled hearings.
The border agent stated he is prepared to risk his career to bring attention to what he views as grave mismanagement and potential dangers posed by current border policies. “However bad you think it is now, it’s only going to be worse,” he warned.
The White House and Border Patrol did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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Rumored deal with Bloc Quebec party could keep Trudeau Liberals in power, stave off election
From LifeSiteNews
“The federal government does not have a mandate to bargain with Quebec separatists at the expense of Alberta, the West and the rest of the country”
The possibility of an early Canadian election may not come to fruition after Bloc Québécois leader Yves-Francois Blanchet hinted that an alliance between the separatist party and the Liberals under Justin Trudeau could become a reality.
Rumors began to swirl that a Bloc-Liberal deal could happen after Bloc House leader Alain Therrien said Sunday that the party’s “objectives remain the same, but the means to get there will be much easier.”
“We will negotiate and seek gains for Quebec … our balance of power has improved, that’s for sure,” he said, as reported by the Canadian Press.
Therrien made the comments in light of the possibility of a federal election taking place before fall 2025 after New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh pulled his official support for Trudeau’s Liberals last week.
Late last month, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre called on Singh to pull his support for Trudeau’s Liberals so that an election could be held.
Therrien also noted that the NDP pulling its support of the Trudeau Liberals has created a “window of opportunity” that his party may exploit. The Canadian Press reported that a person close to the Bloc party said directly that the NDP had in essence handed the party the balance of power.
As it stands now, the Bloc has 32 seats to the NDP’s 24, which is more than enough to prop up the Liberals, who have 154 seats.
As for Blanchet, he told the media on Monday that he was feeling “good” about his party’s newfound power. He then took a shot at Poilievre, saying he is more or less like Trudeau. “There are plenty of issues on which (Poilievre’s) in the same position as Justin Trudeau,” Blanchet said.
“Show us that you’re different, Justin Trudeau, apart from being against abortion, then we’ll see what you have to offer,” he said.
“If the Liberals don’t get into the frame of mind to let us make some very clear gains for Quebec, they’d better pump up the tires on their election truck right away.”
While most Conservative MPs are pro-life, Poilievre supports abortion and has a poor track record when it comes to life and family issues, with Campaign Life Coalition having given him a “red light” rating.
News of a possible Bloc-Liberal deal to keep Trudeau in power drew the immediate ire of Alberta Premier Danielle Smith.
“The federal government does not have a mandate to bargain with Quebec separatists at the expense of Alberta, the West and the rest of the country,” she wrote Monday on X. “If the Liberals go down this path, we need an election to be called immediately.”
On Tuesday, Blanchet responded to Smith’s comments to reporters by saying he found her remarks “funny,” adding that “Canadians are suddenly very interested in us.”
As for Trudeau, his woes continue to mount. LifeSiteNews recently reported how national elections campaign director for Canada’s federal Liberal Party announced he was stepping down because, according to sources close to the party, he does not think Trudeau can win a fourth consecutive election.
Recent polls show that the Conservatives under Poilievre would win a majority government in a landslide in an election held today. Singh’s NDP and Trudeau’s Liberals would lose a massive number of seats.
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