The White House is under growing pressure to cough up what one former national security insider calls a “shocking and disturbing” phone call between Donald Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — a call that may sit right at the center of the brutal murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
The renewed focus comes just a day after Trump insisted the crown prince had nothing to do with Khashoggi’s killing, brushing off the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Salman ordered the hit. That alone stunned a lot of people. Then came the bombshell: a former Trump National Security Council staffer — now Virginia Congressman Eugene Vindman — says he personally reviewed a call that blows apart Trump’s public defense.
Vindman wasn’t some low-level observer. As an NSC staffer, his job was to vet certain presidential calls with foreign leaders. And according to him, one stood out for all the wrong reasons.
“During my tenure on Trump’s White House National Security Council staff, I reviewed many of Trump’s calls with foreign leaders. Of all the calls I reviewed, two stood out as the most problematic,” Vindman said, according to The Daily Beast. “The first, we all know, was between President Trump and President Zelensky, which resulted in President Trump’s first impeachment. The second was between President Trump and Mohammed bin Salman.
“After the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, I reviewed a call between the president and the Saudi crown prince. The American people and the Khashoggi family deserve to know what was said on that call. If history is any guide, the receipts will be shocking.”
So far, the White House hasn’t answered questions about whether it will release the transcript.
If the optics weren’t already jarring, Tuesday made them worse. Seven years after the murder that turned Salman into a global pariah, Trump welcomed him to Washington with full pomp: a military flyover, a horse procession, and Saudi flags draped across the White House grounds.
Later that night, Trump hosted a dinner that looked more like a billionaire all-star lineup — Elon Musk, Cristiano Ronaldo, Tim Cook, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, and billionaire investor Bill Ackerman among the guests.
But nothing triggered outrage quite like Trump’s remarks earlier in the Oval Office.
Speaking about Khashoggi — a U.S. resident murdered and dismembered with a bone saw inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul — Trump said: “You’re mentioning someone that was extremely controversial. A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about. Whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen.”
He then offered cover for Salman: “He knew nothing about it and we can leave it at that. You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that.”
Khashoggi’s work for The Washington Post made him one of the most high-profile critics of the Saudi regime. His killing sparked global outrage and bipartisan fury in Congress. And yet, according to Bob Woodward’s book Rage, Trump once bragged about shielding the crown prince after the murder. “I saved his ass,” Trump said, according to Woodward. “I was able to get Congress to leave him alone. I was able to get them to stop.”
Salman, for his part, again denied wrongdoing this week — telling reporters: “We did all the right steps in terms of investigation, etc. in Saudi Arabia and we’ve improved our system to be sure that nothing happened like that.” (Watch the video below).
Trump’s Oval Office appearance also forced him to defend his family’s deep business ties to Saudi Arabia. He claimed he had no conflicts because he had “nothing to do with the family business.”
The timing didn’t help him. This week, the Trump Organization and Saudi developer Dar Al Arkan announced a new crypto-linked real-estate venture. Meanwhile, Trump-branded projects continue to pop up in the kingdom — and Jared Kushner’s private equity firm is still sitting on $2 billion from a fund controlled by the crown prince.
On CNN Wednesday morning, Vindman argued that the call he reviewed looks even worse given the Trump family’s financial entanglements: it was “equally disturbing and shocking ‘in light of the enrichment that the Trump family has received in the ensuing years.’”
The call in question likely took place around June 2019. Around that time, the White House released a sanitized readout of a Trump–Salman call about Iran and regional stability — but, conveniently, nothing about Khashoggi.
According to The New Yorker, Trump’s family signed a blitz of real-estate and licensing deals in Saudi Arabia that would’ve been “inconceivable” without the presidency.
With the secret Saudi call resurfacing and Khashoggi’s murder back in the news, the push to release the transcript is only growing louder. And if Vindman’s warning holds up, the consequences could be huge.
