Turks tell U.S. officials they have audio and video recordings that support conclusion Khashoggi was killed

The Turkish government has told U.S. officials that it has audio and video recordings that prove Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi was killed inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul this month, according to U.S. and Turkish officials.

The recordings show that a Saudi security team detained Khashoggi in the consulate after he walked in Oct. 2 to obtain an official document before his upcoming wedding, then killed him and dismembered his body, the officials said.

The audio recording in particular provides some of the most persuasive and gruesome evidence that the Saudi team is responsible for Khashoggi’s death, the officials said.

“The voice recording from inside the embassy lays out what happened to Jamal after he entered,” said one person with knowledge of the recording who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss highly sensitive intelligence.

“We’re looking at it very strongly,” Trump said. “We’ll be having a report out soon. We’re working with Turkey, we’re working with Saudi Arabia. What happened is a terrible thing, assuming that happened. I mean, maybe we’ll be pleasantly surprised, but somehow I tend to doubt it.”

The State Department said that it expects the Saudi ambassador to the United States to return from a trip home and provide information about Khashoggi’s status without delay. “We have said to him that we expect information upon his return to the United States,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a briefing with reporters.

She added that the United States has offered to provide law enforcement resources to Turkey, but declined to say whether investigators were on the ground there.

U.S. officials, however, pushed back on calls to halt arms sales to Riyadh, calling such demands premature.

“I think they’re jumping to conclusions,” said Nauert, the State Department spokeswoman. “This is entirely a hypothetical situation at this point. We don’t know what happened. We don’t have the facts of the case.”

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