Trump told Mike Pompeo 'I've been in difficult negotiations' but 'I've never had to take a bone saw' when he found out the Saudis had dismembered Jamal Khashoggi in the Turkish Embassy
- Donald Trump apparently got stuck on intelligence that Saudi assassins used a bone saw to dismember journalist Jamal Khashoggi's body after killing him
- 'I've been in difficult negotiations. I've never had to take a bone saw,' the then-president said at the time, according to a Thursday report
- Trump asked his Secretary of State: 'Have you ever had to take a bone saw into negotiations?', to which he responded, 'No'
- Jamal Khashoggi was a journalist and Saudi dissident, he fled to the U.S. in 2017
- He visited the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul, Turkey on October 2, 2018 to obtain papers related to his marriage. He was never seen again
Donald Trump couldn't get over Saudi Arabia dismembering Jamal Khashoggi with a 'bone saw', a Thursday report revealed, as the then-president saw prospects of Middle East peace dwindle after Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman reportedly ordered the journalist's murder in 2018.
Kirsten Fontenrose, then the director of Gulf affairs at the National Security Council, told Yahoo News that Trump said at the time: 'I've been in difficult negotiations. I've never had to take a bone saw.'
'I mean, he would go back to it and back to it and back to it, trying to press them,' Fontenrose said of the president's reaction to that piece of intelligence
She claimed Trump would repeatedly tell the Saudis: 'This will change everything, you guys. We've got to know. We're with you. We're standing behind Saudi Arabia ... but we've got to get to the bottom of this. Was there a bone saw? Was there a bone saw?'
In speaking with his team of national security advisers, Trump was stuck on discussing the bone saw.
'Have you ever had to take a bone saw into negotiations?' Trump asked then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, according to Fontenrose.
Donald Trump got stuck on intelligence that Saudi assassins, allegedly directed to murder journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, used a bone saw to dismember the dissident's body after killing him. Trump stands with senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner (right) and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (left) in Saudi Arabia in May 2017
'No Mr. President, ha-ha,' Pomepo responded, and repeated as the 45th president pushed the matter: 'No, no, no, Donald, we didn't know anything about it. We're still trying to get to the bottom of this.'
Khashoggi was a Saudi journalist, Washington Post columnist and dissident. He fled from Saudi Arabia in 2017 and relocated to the U.S. when he became fearful of retaliation for his criticism of Crown Prince Salman.
On October 2, 2018 Khashoggi walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey to obtain marriage documents, but was never seen leaving.
Three days after the murder, the Crown Prince MBS told Bloomberg that, to the best of his knowledge, Khashoggi left the consulate. However, as Turkish officials started revealing details of the incident – including leaking audio tapes from inside the consulate, the Saudis said Khashoggi died in a 'fist fight.'
Ultimately, MBS landed on claiming Khashoggi has been murdered by 'rouge killers' who acted outside the Saudi government.
'I just spoke with the King of Saudi Arabia, who denies any knowledge of what took place with regard to, as he said, his Saudi Arabian citizen,' Trump said on October 15, 2018. 'It sounded to me like maybe these could have been rogue killers. Who knows?'
'I've been in difficult negotiations. I've never had to take a bone saw,' Trump said of the intelligence, according to a Thursday report. Here Trump shakes hands with MBS during his visit to the White House on March 20, 2018 – seven months before Khashoggi's murder
Jamal Khashoggi (right) is pictured in CCTV footage walking into the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul, Turkey on October 2, 2018 to obtain papers related to his marriage. He was never seen again
Khashoggi's murder sparked a crisis within the White House's foreign policy team, especially with his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who had made the Saudis the keystone of his Middle East strategy.
In fact, Trump's first foreign trip as president was to Saudi Arabia and he hosted MBS at the White House.
Trump's national security adviser at the time, John Bolton, wanted the president to be harder on Saudi Arabia and reveal intelligence related to Khashoggi's murder.
'Get the full story out, whatever the full story is,' Bolton says he and Kushner told the crown prince in a phone call shortly after Khashoggi's disappearance.
Fontenrose, who monitored the calls between Trump and Saudi Arabian leadership, said the president pushed MBS and his father, King Salman, on what they knew about the murder.
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'The president had multiple calls with MBS and with King Salman, specifically asking them, did you know anything about this?' Fontenrose told Yahoo. 'The president would flat out ask, I mean, up to a dozen times on any individual phone call, whether it was with King Salman or with MBS or both of them, 'Did you have any knowledge of this operation?' 'Did you know this was going to happen?' 'Did you give this order?'
Every time, she said, it was: 'No, no, no, we didn't know anything and we're still looking and we're still searching.'
'Yes, Donald,' they would say, 'we totally understand this makes things difficult for you and we're trying to get to the bottom of it.'
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