Trump lenience in Khashoggi case payback for Saudi favors: Analyst

US President Donald Trump refrained from holding Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman to account over the murder of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi last October as a means of paying back Riyadh’s favors, an American political analyst says.

“Being very wealthy, one moves among the same circle of people and favors are done for each other. People, such as many Saudis, would help bail him out of desperate situations and there would be some payback,” Myles Hoenig told Press TV on Saturday.

“In Trump’s case, the saved favor was letting” bin Salman “get off nearly ‘Scott-free,’” he added.

Khashoggi, a royal insider-turned-bin Salman critic, was killed after entering the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018.

After weeks of denials of any involvement in Khashoggi’s disappearance, the Riyadh regime acknowledged the “premeditated” murder, but has vehemently sought to distance the heir to the throne from the case.

A Saudi prosecutor has said Khashoggi's body was dismembered, removed from the diplomatic mission, and handed to an unidentified “local cooperator."

Various reports have verified that some on a team that traveled to Istanbul to carry out the murder were drawn from among the crown prince’s personal bodyguards. Last December, the Istanbul Chief Prosecutor’s office issued arrest warrants for two Saudi nationals close to bin Salman over the foul play.

PressTV-‘Trump destroying his credibility over Khashoggi case’

A lawyer believes US President Donald Trump is demolishing his own reputation by covering up Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s involvement in the killing of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Trump’s deal with Democrats

Hoenig also addressed the issue of Trump’s finally reaching a deal with congressional Democrats on Friday to terminate the partial government shutdown that had lasted over a month, without getting the $5.7 billion he had requested for building the US-Mexico border barrier.

He said the US president gave in, in the face of House Speaker Pelosi’s “power,” and amid attrition among the ranks of his supporters in the country.

“What Trump has likely never encountered was an equal, someone who yields enormous power, if not necessarily financially. He met his match with Nancy Pelosi, a seasoned political fighter who knows how to wield power, and for once, able to capitalize on it,” the analyst said.

“So many factors led to his capitulation. Not just meeting his better in this case, but he was beginning to lose support from his base, and the American public at large, never in his good graces, was out for blood over the shutdown. Trump didn’t stand a chance if he continued his terror campaign against American workers, thinking he’d get what he wanted at no cost at all to him,” he concluded.

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