Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and other Trump administration officials will attend an economic forum in Saudi Arabia next week, one year after the same conference repelled prominent financial leaders after the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.
Mnuchin will take part in the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh, where world economic leaders will gather to discuss the global economy and investment trends. He will sit for a moderated discussion as part of the event, which was founded in 2017.
The New York Times reported that senior White House adviser Jared Kushner and his aide, Avi Berkowitz, will also attend the conference.
Brian Hook, the administration’s special envoy to Iran, is expected to attend as well, according to the Times.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment. A State Department spokesperson declined to comment on Hook’s involvement.
The Trump administration will be well represented at the conference roughly one year after Washington Post journalist and Saudi dissident Khashoggi was brutally murdered.
The CIA and foreign officials have concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered Khashoggi’s killing. Khashoggi was last seen entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in early October 2018, where is he believed to have been killed and dismembered.
His body has not been recovered.
Amid outcry over the journalist’s death, Mnuchin and a slew of other high profile economics exerts and officials opted not to attend the Future Investment Initiative last year.
The Saudi government issued several conflicting explanations for his disappearance before eventually acknowledging that he was killed inside the consulate, while denying that the crown prince was involved.
President Trump has repeatedly pointed to the crown prince’s denials of any involvement in Khashoggi’s killings. He argued that Saudi Arabia represented a critical economic and military ally.
The administration sanctioned 17 Saudi officials connected to the killing, including a top aide to the crown prince. But the response fell short of what many lawmakers on both sides of the aisle had called for.
Updated at 5:06 p.m.