U.S. President Donald Trump says he has been fully briefed on an audio recording of the killing of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside Riyadh's consulate in Istanbul last month, but has no intention of listening to it because of the violence it depicts.
"It's a suffering tape. It's a terrible tape," Trump told Fox News Sunday in a White House interview that was taped Friday.
"It's very violent, very vicious and terrible," Trump said.
Trump said Saturday the U.S. government would release its findings on the October 2 killing of Khashoggi on Tuesday. The State Department says no final conclusions have been reached, although some U.S. news accounts have reported that the Central Intelligence Agency has concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Riyadh's de facto leader, ordered the killing.
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Asked in the Fox interview if the crown prince lied to him about his involvement, Trump replied, "I don't know. Who can really know? But I can say this, he's got many people... that say he had no knowledge."
Trump added, "He told me that he had nothing to do with it. He told me that, I would say, maybe five times at different points, as recently as a few days ago."
Saudi Arabia has filed charges against 11 operatives accused of involvement in Khashoggi's killing and said it will seek the death penalty against five of them.
Trump conceded that people close to the prince "were probably involved." But he said, "I want to stick with an ally that in many ways has been very good."
Fox interviewer Chris Wallace asked Trump whether he would go along with moves in Congress to cut off U.S. involvement in the Saudi-led war in Yemen or halt arms sales to Riyadh, but Trump said it depends.
"I want to see Yemen end," he said. "It takes two to tango and Iran has to end also. I want Saudi to stop but I want Iran to stop also."
Trump was briefed Saturday on the U.S. investigation of the killing of Khashoggi by telephone by CIA Director Gina Haspel and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo while the president was aboard Air Force One en route to California to inspect the devastation from wildfires in the western state.
The State Department said the U.S. government "is determined to hold all those responsible for the killing... accountable" but that "numerous unanswered questions" remain.
The assessment by the CIA, first reported Friday by The Washington Post, contradicts that of Saudi Arabia, whose top prosecutor one day earlier exonerated the crown prince in the killing of Khashoggi.
U.S. officials say the CIA concluded that 15 Saudi agents flew in a Saudi government aircraft to Istanbul and assassinated Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate.
Khashoggi, who wrote opinion columns for the Post and was a critic of the Saudi crown prince, was killed at the Saudi consulate while he was trying to get documents for his planned marriage to a Turkish woman.
The Post said the CIA based its conclusion on multiple sources of intelligence, including a phone call that the prince's brother, Khalid bin Salman, who is also the Saudi ambassador to the United States, had with Khashoggi.
In the phone call, Khalid told Khashoggi that it would be safe for him to go the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to retrieve the documents for his marriage. The paper said it was not known whether or not Khalid knew Khashoggi would be killed.
Khalid denied in a tweet on Friday that he had spoken with Khashoggi.
“The last contact I had with Mr. Khashoggi was via text on Oct. 26, 2017. I never talked to him by phone and certainly never suggested he go to Turkey for any reason. I ask the U.S. government to release any information regarding this claim,'' he said.
