Graham on punishment for Saudi journalist’s disappearance: ‘Everything would be on the table’

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) slammed the Saudi Arabian government on Thursday over the disappearance of Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi, saying that if Saudi officials were to blame, “everything would be on the table.”

“With every passing day it looks increasingly likely that he’s dead and the most logical explanation is that he went into the consulate and he never came out and the Saudis had something to do with it,” Graham told CNN on Thursday evening.

“All the indicators point to Saudi Arabia, and if it turns out to be Saudi Arabia, as I’ve said before, there’ll be hell to pay,” he said, adding that “everything would be on the table” if the Saudi government was found to be behind Khashoggi’s disappearance.

“You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to be concerned here.” @LindseyGrahamSC offers his assessment of missing Washington Post writer Jamal Khashoggi, telling @KateBolduan that “with every passing day, it looks increasingly likely that he’s dead.” https://t.co/banw8XfpfV pic.twitter.com/awJYsFRdUS

— OutFrontCNN (@OutFrontCNN) October 11, 2018

“…[T]hey’re testing our values, and if they in fact did this, I want every other country that we deal with to understand what would happen to you. We’d hit them in the wallet, and everything, in my view, would be on the table,” he said. 

{mosads}“When it comes to dealing with this, count me all in to being as hard as possible … I think there will be a bipartisan tsunami coming against Saudi Arabia. This is a test of who we are,” he added.

Graham, however, said earlier Thursday that he does not agree with cutting off U.S. support for the Saudis in the Yemen war, saying the Khashoggi issue and the Yemen war are “two different things.”

“The Yemen war is a proxy war with Iran,” he said.

Graham repeatedly suggested invoking the Global Magnitsky Act, which authorizes the government to sanction human rights offenders, freeze their assets and ban them from entering the U.S. 

Turkish officials claimed last week that Saudi Arabia killed Khashoggi in its consulate in Istanbul earlier this month. The Washington Post reported Thursday that Turkish officials now say they have audio and video to support that claim.

The incident sparked widespread condemnation among media outlets, lawmakers on Capitol Hill and in the White House.

“If it’s found that they, as everything indicates today…murdered a journalist, that will hugely change our relationship. I mean, there’s no question about it,” Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told reporters Thursday. 

“Well it would be a really sad thing, and we will probably know in the very short future,” President Trump said when asked about the report on Fox News Thursday morning. “We don’t like it. I don’t like it. No good.”