US President Donald Trump’s reluctance to hold Saudi leadership accountable for the brutal murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi stemmed from a partly aspirational $110 billion arms deal between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia that was inflated at the direction of Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner, according to two U.S. officials and three former White House officials, ABC news reported.
“Kushner, in a bid to symbolically solidify the new alliance between the Trump administration and Saudi Arabia while claiming a victory on the president’s first foreign trip to Riyadh, pushed State and Defense officials to inflate the figure with arms exchanges that were aspirational at best, the officials said. Secretary of Defense James Mattis supported Kushner’s effort and ultimately endorsed the memorandum, according to a former NSC official familiar with the matter.”
“We need to sell them as much as possible,” Kushner told colleagues at a national security council meeting weeks before the May 2017 summit in Saudi Arabia, according to an administration official familiar with the matter.
Since the death of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at KSA’s Consulate in Turkey’s Istanbul, Trump has insisted the U.S. would be “foolish” to disrupt any potential weapons sales with the Saudis whose crown prince Mohammad bin Salman is accused of committing the crime.
Source: ABC News
