Kashoggi’s widow and Democrats demand release of a call transcript with Trump and Saudi crown prince

WASHINGTON (AP) — The widow of Washington Post journalist Jamal Kashoggi called Friday for the release of the transcript of a 2019 phone call that President Donald Trump had with Mohammed bin Salman, joining Democratic lawmakers who are raising questions about whether Trump personally benefitted from his embrace of the Saudi crown prince.

Hanan Elatr Khashoggi appeared on Capitol Hill on Friday morning on the heels of Trump’s dismissal of U.S. intelligence findings that Prince Mohammed most likely had culpability in the October 2018 slaying of her husband. Trump also lavished the Saudi ruler this week with some of Washington’s highest honors for a foreign dignitary, deepening the business and military relationship between the two nations.

Saudi intelligence officials and a forensic doctor killed and dismembered Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in 2018.

“There is no justification to kidnap him, torture him, to kill him and to cut him to pieces,” Hanan Elatr Khashoggi said Friday during an emotional news conference. “This is a terrorist act.”

The demand in Congress for the Trump administration to release the call transcripts is being led Rep. Eugene Vindman, a freshman Democrat from Virginia who was deputy legal adviser to the National Security Council during Trump’s first term.

Vindman, who has reviewed the transcript of the phone call with Prince Mohammed, declined to go into specifics of the classified document Friday, but said it used “the terminology of quid pro quo, the ensuing benefits that the president reaped.”

The Democratic lawmakers also pointed out that Trump’s family has extensive business dealings in Saudi Arabia that at times have benefitted from the prince’s direct involvement.

The situation carries echoes of Trump’s first impeachment over his July 2019 call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in which he asked the new Ukraine president to do him a “favor” in investigating his presidential rival, Joe Biden. At the time, Trump ended up releasing a transcript of the call with Zelenskyy in which he also said he would withhold $400 million in military aid.

Vindman, then at the security council, also reviewed that call. He said that out of all the calls he reviewed in his job, the calls with Zelenskyy and Prince Mohammed stood out as the most concerning. He called the transcript of the call with the Saudi ruler “shocking.”

“The Kashoggi family and the American people deserve to know what was said on that call,” he added.

When asked if the White House would release the transcript, White House communications director Steven Cheung in a statement called Vindman “a bitter back-bencher who nobody takes seriously. He is a serial liar and was part of the hoax relating to the perfect Ukraine call, in which the Ukrainian president said so himself.”

Vindman’s twin brother, then-Army officer, Lt. Col. Alex Vindman, also worked at the National Security Council at the time, and had a prominent role in Trump’s 2019 impeachment.

Eugene Vindman was not as public a figure in that impeachment trial as his brother was. But after the Senate voted to acquit Trump of the House impeachment charges, the White House reassigned Alex Vindman from the council and pushed Eugene Vindman out, too.

Eugene Vindman ran for office representing northern Virginia last year.

It is unlikely that the Trump administration would voluntarily release the 2019 call transcript with Prince Mohammed. Democratic lawmakers, who are in the minority, also have little power to force its release. They also stayed away from speculating whether Trump’s relationship with Prince Mohammed would be grounds for another impeachment inquiry if they retake the House next year.

Still, they said the interaction was emblematic of the direction that Trump is leading the country.

“We are being drawn in the direction of authoritarian monarchy, in tyranny right now,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat.