On the same day that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo landed in Saudi Arabia to discuss the disappearance of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a previously promised $100 million landed in American bank accounts from Saudi Arabia, according to a The New York Times report.
The Times reported that the money was for American efforts to stabilize Syria and that Saudi Arabia had promised the Trump administration the funds over the summer.
{mosads}The timing of the arrival of the money has raised eyebrows among some bureaucrats, the Times reported, as speculation heightens over the disappearance of Khashoggi.
The Washington Post columnist was last seen entering the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2, and Turkey has said that it has evidence that Saudi officials killed and dismembered him inside the consulate.
Brett McGurk, the U.S. envoy to the coalition fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, told the Times that Pompeo’s visit to Saudi Arabia and the $100 million payment were not connected.
“The specific transfer of funds has been long in process and has nothing to do with other events or the secretary’s visit,” McGurk said.
Pompeo visited Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, and on Wednesday he met with Turkey’s president and foreign minister in Ankara as the United States attempts to learn what happened to Khashoggi.
Several U.S. lawmakers have said that Saudi Arabia appears complicit in Khashoggi’s disappearance, but President Trump has yet to blame the Saudis.
Trump, who earlier this week suggested that “rogue killers” may be to blame for Khashoggi’s disappearance, offered a defense of Saudi Arabia in an interview Tuesday with The Associated Press.
“I think we have to find out what happened first,” he said. “Here we go again with, you know, you’re guilty until proven innocent. I don’t like that. We just went through that with Justice [Brett] Kavanaugh and he was innocent all the way as far as I’m concerned.”