{"id":395769,"date":"2025-11-22T00:36:33","date_gmt":"2025-11-22T00:36:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/395769\/"},"modified":"2025-11-22T00:36:33","modified_gmt":"2025-11-22T00:36:33","slug":"khashoggis-widow-democrats-want-release-of-call-transcript-with-trump-and-saudi-crown-prince","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/395769\/","title":{"rendered":"Khashoggi’s widow, Democrats want release of call transcript with Trump and Saudi crown prince"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The widow of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi called Friday for the release of the transcript of a 2019 phone call that President Donald Trump had with Mohammed bin Salman<\/a>, joining Democratic lawmakers who are raising questions about whether Trump personally benefitted from his embrace of the Saudi crown prince.<\/p>\n

Hanan Elatr Khashoggi appeared on Capitol Hill on Friday morning on the heels of Trump\u2019s 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<\/a> this week with some of Washington\u2019s highest honors for a foreign dignitary, deepening the business and military relationship between the two nations.<\/p>\n

Saudi intelligence officials and a forensic doctor killed and dismembered Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in 2018. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no justification to kidnap him, torture him, to kill him and to cut him to pieces,\u201d Hanan Elatr Khashoggi said Friday during an emotional news conference. \u201cThis is a terrorist act.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019s first term. <\/p>\n

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 \u201cthe terminology of quid pro quo, the ensuing benefits that the president reaped.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Democratic lawmakers also pointed out that Trump\u2019s family has extensive business dealings in Saudi Arabia that at times have benefitted from the prince\u2019s direct involvement.<\/p>\n

The situation carries echoes of Trump\u2019s first impeachment over his July 2019 call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in which he asked the new Ukraine president to do him a \u201cfavor\u201d in investigating his presidential rival, Joe Biden. At the time, Trump ended up releasing a transcript of the call<\/a> with Zelenskyy in which he also said he would withhold $400 million in military aid.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cshocking.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cThe Kashoggi family and the American people deserve to know what was said on that call,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

During Prince Mohammed\u2019s state visit this week, Hanan Elatr Khashoggi has tried to serve as a reminder of her late husband\u2019s brutal killing. Originally from Egypt, Khashoggi received political asylum in the U.S. in 2023 and currently lives in Virginia. She cast the demand for the transcript as a continuation of his work standing up for human rights and criticizing Saudi rulers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI need to know what is the truth in this conversation,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

When asked if the White House would release the transcript, White House communications director Steven Cheung in a statement called Vindman \u201ca 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vindman\u2019s twin brother, then-Army officer, Lt. Col. Alex Vindman, also worked at the National Security Council at the time, and had a prominent role<\/a> in Trump\u2019s 2019 impeachment.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> from the council and pushed Eugene Vindman out, too.<\/p>\n

Eugene Vindman ran for office representing northern Virginia last year.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s relationship with Prince Mohammed would be grounds for another impeachment inquiry if they retake the House next year.<\/p>\n

Still, they said the interaction was emblematic of the direction that Trump is leading the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are being drawn in the direction of authoritarian monarchy, in tyranny right now,\u201d said Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The widow of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi called Friday for the release of the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":395770,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[187768,84,69,187767,57,187770,13025,184884,187769,82,116726,50,80,45980,271,128466,89,187771,67,8128,370,132,68,3656,93],"class_list":["post-395769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","category-us","tag-alex-vindman","tag-district-of-columbia","tag-donald-trump","tag-eugene-vindman","tag-general-news","tag-hanan-elatr-khashoggi","tag-impeachment","tag-jamal-khashoggi","tag-jamie-raskin","tag-joe-biden","tag-mohammad-bin-salman-bin-abdulaziz-al-saud","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-royalty","tag-saudi-arabia","tag-steven-cheung","tag-u-s-democratic-party","tag-u-s-national-security-council","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-congress","tag-united-states-government","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-volodymyr-zelenskyy","tag-washington-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395769\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/395770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}