President Biden is facing growing pressure to take direct action against Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman over the 2018 killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
On two Sunday morning shows, White House press secretary Jen Psaki defended the Biden administration’s response to the intelligence report released Friday that found bin Salman “approved” the 2018 assassination of Khashoggi, a United States resident and Saudi critic.
While sanctions have been levied against other people and entities over Khashoggi’s death, they haven’t been against the kingdom’s de facto leader as the White House tries to adopt a tougher stance against Saudi Arabia. At the same time, Biden is attempting to keep the Saudis on his side as a strategic partner who can counterbalance Iran in the region.
“The United States has not historically sanctioned the leaders of countries where we have diplomatic relations or even somewhere we don’t have diplomatic relations,” Psaki told Fox News. “Our objective here from the government, from the Biden administration, is preventing this from ever happening again.”
BIDEN ADMINISTRATION RELEASES REPORT SAYING SAUDI CROWN PRINCE ORDERED KHASHOGGI OPERATION
In a separate interview on CNN, Psaki was played a clip of Biden promising during the Democratic primary to make Saudi Arabia “pariah” over intelligence that indicated Khashoggi was lured into the kingdom’s Istanbul consulate, killed, and dismembered by a 15-man team of assassins in October 2018.
“We believe there is more effective ways to make sure this doesn’t happen again and to also be able to leave room to work with the Saudis on areas where there is mutual agreement, where there is interest, national interest for the United States,” she said. “That is what diplomacy looks like.”
Psaki went on to say the White House was recalibrating the U.S.-Saudi relationship by including ending support for the proxy war in Yemen and introducing the so-called Khashoggi rule. That rule allows the secretary of state to deny visas to foreign nationals if they have threatened dissidents or journalists in their own countries.
The Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs rejected the claim that bin Salman ordered Khashoggi’s killing, although the crown prince has said he bears responsibility for it. The Saudis arrested eight people allegedly linked to the assassination, five of whom were sentenced to death but were all later handed prison sentences.
In Sunday’s appearances, Psaki also defended the coronavirus spending package passed by House Democrats last week. The measure will be considered by the Senate before likely heading to a conference committee of both chambers ahead of a March 14 deadline when some existing COVID-19 benefits expire.
Psaki was pressed on how $700 billion in the House bill allocated to be spent between 2022 and 2031 could be termed as pandemic “relief.”
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“This package is meant to, of course, provide immediate, direct relief, but also provide a bridge to help us all get through this crisis,” she told Fox News, adding that schools, for example, needed to plan for the future.
