On Sunday evening, Sen. Lindsey Graham said that if the CIA believed that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was involved in the killing of Jamal Khashoggi that he would push for sanctions against the de facto leader of Saudi Arabia.
Khashoggi, a U.S. resident and writer for the Washington Post, was killed on apparent orders from the Saudi government when he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to obtain a document required for his marriage. When Khashoggi went missing, the Saudi government at first denied that it knew anything about his disappearance. It later said that he had been killed in a fistfight at the consulate. Finally, under international pressure, the kingdom changed its story again to say that he had in fact been murdered, but that the crown prince was not himself involved.
Since then, the CIA has reportedly concluded that Khashoggi would not have been killed without an order from the crown prince. This contradicts Trump’s statement last Tuesday that Crown Prince Mohammed’s involvement was not knowable and that, at any rate, Saudi Arabia was an important ally.
[Read: Trump backs Saudis despite Khashoggi killing in statement with 8 exclamation points]
Trump’s explanation wasn’t satisfactory for many Republicans, including Lindsey Graham. Along with other senators, he has requested a briefing this week on what exactly the CIA determined in its investigation into the crown prince’s involvement with the killing.
In a conversation with Jonathan Swan of Axios, Graham explained, “If the evidence is sufficient to conclude with high probability that MBS [a term sometimes used for Crown Prince Mohammed] was complicit in this murder, then I will take steps to do a sense of the Senate resolution making that statement.”
He also emphasized the importance of backing up the intelligence community and looking into Saudi Arabia’s actions in the ongoing war in Yemen, the embargo against Qatar, and the detainment of Lebanon’s prime minister in 2017.
These actions, compounded by the crown prince’s lies in the aftermath of Khashoggi’s killing, point to an unstable leader. As Graham put it, “We cannot have a normal strategic relationship with somebody this crazy.”
Graham is right. And taking action where the president is unwilling to do so is exactly what Republicans in the Senate should be doing.
All indicators point to the crown prince’s involvement. If Trump is afraid to take him on, it’s a good thing that the Senate isn’t.
