Now, just imagine that it was the Trump administration doing this. The media would be in a frenzy, declaring he was a killer for defending a killer, they’d say he’s in the Saudi pockets. When Biden does? Just small news pieces
U.S. moves to shield Saudi crown prince in Khashoggi killing
Isn’t that great? The US is doing it, not the Biden admin
The Biden administration declared Thursday that the high office held by Saudi Arabia’s crown prince should shield him from lawsuits for his role in the killing of a U.S.-based journalist, a turnaround from Joe Biden’s passionate campaign trail denunciations of Prince Mohammed bin Salman over the brutal slaying.
The administration said the prince’s official standing should give him immunity in the lawsuit filed by the fiancée of slain Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi and by the rights group he founded, Democracy for the Arab World Now.
The request is non-binding and a judge will ultimately decide whether to grant immunity. But it is bound to anger human rights activists and many U.S. lawmakers, coming as Saudi Arabia has stepped up imprisonment and other retaliation against peaceful critics at home and abroad and has cut oil production, a move seen as undercutting efforts by the U.S. and its allies to punish Russia for its war against Ukraine
The State Department on Thursday called the administration’s decision to try to protect the Saudi crown prince from U.S. courts in Khashoggi’s killing “purely a legal determination.”
And despite backing up the crown prince in his bid to block the lawsuit against him, the State Department “takes no view on the merits of the present suit and reiterates its unequivocal condemnation of the heinous murder of Jamal Khashoggi,” the administration’s court filing late Thursday said.
It may, or may not, be the correct legal determination, based on U.S. and international law.
Biden as a candidate vowed to make a “pariah” out of Saudi rulers over the 2018 killing of Khashoggi.
“I think it was a flat-out murder,” Biden said in a 2019 CNN town hall, as a candidate. “And I think we should have nailed it as that. I publicly said at the time we should treat it that way and there should be consequences relating to how we deal with those — that power.”
Remember when Biden fist-bumped MBS in July? There was some outrage from activists, but, the media, which had been very, very mad over Khashoggi’s murder, took a quiet position, much like they are now. The NY Times has a small, way down the front webpage article. The Washington Post, for whom Khashoggi worked for, has a slightly bigger piece, but, it is treated more as straight news, rather than opinion masquerading as straight news. There is an opinion piece by David Ignatius, though.
The fist bump??
Not as important as Trump asking MBS to cut oil production in April 2020
Gas price was $1.94 at that time
By the time Biden took over in Feb it was $2.94 and trending up.
Perhaps, just perhaps, someone in the Biden Administration has been reading my comments here and said, “Hey, you know, maybe that Dana guy is right, and the President should not have called Mohammed bin Salman a liar in public if we didn’t want the Saudis to cut production,” and they learned from that.
Shielding the Crown Prince from such frivolous lawsuits would be part of the US trying to placate him.
Of course, I cannot see how any American court could have any jurisdiction in this anyway: Mr Khashoggi was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul; a consulate, like an embassy, is considered the sovereign territory of the nation whose consulate it is. Thus, Mr Khashoggi was killed in Saudi territory. The only courts that would have any legal jurisdiction there would be Saudi courts.